Cluster B Diagnosis
While on the reference desk the other day, I had a phone call from someone who identified himself as a professor in the psychiatry department. He was looking for information on a patient with Cluster B diagnosis, something he had never heard of. He recommended I look in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, also known as, DSM-IV-TR. I took his phone number (he didn’t have an e-mail address) and told him I would call him when I found the information. I found the book, but had to Google “cluster B” to find out that it referred to anti-social personality disorder. I was able to find the information he wanted, but was unable to contact him from the reference desk because it was long distance.
Fortunately the library was not busy and I was able to catch a “real” librarian who was able to call him long distance from her office phone. He wanted her to dictate the 4 pages of the diagnosis over the phone. She declined, and in the process discovered he was not affiliated with UBC. The solution to his problem turned out to be having him contact the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia Library, which will mail out reference information to physician members.
It was a good introduction to DSM-IV-TR (I realize we mentioned it briefly in class a few weeks ago) and reminder of the reference services offered to members of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia.
Fortunately the library was not busy and I was able to catch a “real” librarian who was able to call him long distance from her office phone. He wanted her to dictate the 4 pages of the diagnosis over the phone. She declined, and in the process discovered he was not affiliated with UBC. The solution to his problem turned out to be having him contact the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia Library, which will mail out reference information to physician members.
It was a good introduction to DSM-IV-TR (I realize we mentioned it briefly in class a few weeks ago) and reminder of the reference services offered to members of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia.
posted by InfoLit Librarian at 1:04 p.m.
1 Comments:
Interesting scenario, especially how it played out. Quite often, I get questions from physicians who say that are from the hospital and I make the assumption it's VGH they are talking about, or they say they are faculty, and I discover they are not in Vancouver. All these factors come into play when you have to do follow-ups to the reference interview.
DSM-IV-TR is quite the tool, isn't it? Nice to have a robust tool like Google to use in concert with it, I find. I wonder if the Stat!Ref version of the DSM would have helped. Dean
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