Free Online English-Spanish Dictionary of Healthcare Terms

The English-Spanish Dictionary of Health Related Terms has

nearly 14,000 terms covering topics such as emergency and disaster preparedness, terms related to anatomy, signs and symptoms, communicable diseases, chronic diseases, maternal and child health, nutrition, occupational health, environmental health, oral health, mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, and traditional medicine. Also, many popular terms used in Mexico and Central America to describe signs and symptoms of illness have been included in the dictionary.

A project of the Health Initiative of the Americas, this guide is available as a pdf file, and is freely available in order to help strengthen communication between Spanish speaking people and healthcare workers.

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MedicalSpanish.com

How do I find a full text article? Part 1: Medline

Where do I find articles? In 1959, Librarian Herman H. Henkle's print journal collection, might have been your source! But in 2009, you have more options.

There are still a few print journals left on the shelves at Montgomery Hospital's Library, but most of your articles will come from three sources:


1. Medline is the largest database of article information. The National Library of Medicine(NLM) funded by the U.S. government, employs a large staff of librarians to summarize medical articles, and assign subject headings/tags to each one. The data is freely accessible, and many companies repackage it with different interfaces.

PubMed Medline: This interface is produced by the NLM, and is available from any computer for free. If you want free full text though, only 10% of the articles have a link to the full text online from the publisher. To restrict to full text articles, click the limits button, and choose the "links to free full text" option.

2. Interlibrary Loan NOTE due to closure of the library interlibrary loan is not available.

3. Google: Sometimes, if you are fortunate, a publisher will post an article in free full text to the web, perhaps because of the public health implications, or just because they feel like it.

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How do I find an article? Part 2: PMID Number

Explaining things with medical analogies

Altoona Hospital's Family Practice program has a list of medical analogies to help explain disease concepts to patients if they are having difficulty understanding. Analogies tell a kind of story, explaining a disease in terms of another subject that is more familiar, for instance comparing the risks of hypertension to pressure in a pipe, that often isn't noticed until the pipe bursts.
For other analogies check out http://www.scienceanalogies.info/webanalogylinks.html