Mary Shah, MLS AHIP
Health Sciences Librarian & Archivist
Horblit Health Sciences Library
Danbury Hospital, Nuvance Health

Content

McGraw-Hill promotes AccessEmergency Medicine as a resource that “provides quick diagnosis and treatment answers for a broad spectrum of complaints encountered in the ED, ranging from neurologic and pediatric emergencies, to poisoning and trauma – specifically designed for optimized viewing on any device.”

It contains 22 searchable textbooks and atlases, instructional videos, board review materials, an integrated drug database, over 16,000 full-color images, patient education information (developed by Change Healthcare LLC), and a clerkship corner for ease of use for medical students. A Quick Reference Tab gives access to “To the Point: Clinical Reviews” and Emergency Medicine Manual. Drug monographs can be searched by generic or trade names, as well as drug class. All patient handouts are available in English or Spanish, with some also available in other languages. Multimedia content includes videos, detailed emergency medicine and pediatric procedural videos designed to help users through basic and advanced skills procedures, brief interventions, and applications of decision rules. Case Studies are divided by audience: “Which is Which?”, Case Files, and Resident Readiness^©: Emergency Medicine. Patient Education can be personalized and branded when a user is logged into a MyAccess profile.

The Advisory Board is led by Judith E. Tintinalli, MD, Professor and Chair Emeritus of the Department of Emergency Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, who is aided by four additional academically affiliated emergency medicine specialists.

Features/Functionality

AccessEmergency Medicine has a Discovery Channel available on this platform as well as a “Review Questions” section with over 3,000 questions and a featured video of “Tintinalli’s Necessary Takeaways.” The featured video usually lets users know about a section or chapter of Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine: A Comprehensive Study Guide, 9th edition, Tintinalli et al. (McGraw-Hill, 2020)

Books can be browsed by title or topic. Basic search is accessible through a search bar. Readers can use a query builder on the left side of the page, with all search results displaying all formats in one set. Results are a mix of semantic tagging and text matching, with patient education handouts ranked lowest. This search engine does not support Boolean operators. If there were a way to make Boolean operators functional in an advanced search screen, the utility of this platform would improve exponentially for information professionals.

In the Study Tools section, users can access Review Questions, a four-week Clerkship Curriculum, and an EMReC curriculum for an emergency medicine curriculum. Each of the residency modules contains one week of material; round 1 is designed for years 1-2 of residency, while round 2 is designed for years 2-4 of residency.

A user center for all McGraw-Hill Medical platforms has important information, training webinars, and updates on content, including removal of old editions.

Having the latest editions of McGraw-Hill’s Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine, Fitzpatrick’s Color Atlas and Synopsis of Clinical Dermatology, 8th edition, Wolff et al. (2017),  Goldfrank’s Toxicologic Emergencies, 11th edition (Nelson et al. (2019, and Current Diagnosis and Treatment: Emergency Medicine, 8th edition, Stone and Humphries (2017) all located in one platform can be very useful — not only for clerkship students, residents, and fellows, but also for attending physicians and pediatricians wanting to renew for their maintenance of certification with ease.

AccessEmergency Medicine interacts with other McGraw-Hill Medical resources, such as AccessSurgery, AccessMedicine, and more. It is possible to search across the products, but there is no Boolean search available. When signing in through MyAccess, a user can remotely use the platform from anywhere for 90 days at a time, save favorite content, and organize favorites into customizable folders, as well as track self-assessment progress.

Family physicians can earn up to 20 continuing medical education credits through research and completion of an evaluation form for each clinical topic from eligible titles as listed on the website. Seven of the titles are accessible through AccessEmergency Medicine. This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the ACCME through the joint providership of Interstate Postgraduate Medical Association and McGraw-Hill Companies.

Business Model

It is possible to purchase a site license with unlimited concurrent users. Allowing multiple users once enabled the possibility for course assignments for a cohort. That feature is no longer available.

A one-year individual subscription is available at $595 per year. Pay per view is also an option, with 24-hour access for $34.95 or 48-hour access for $54.95.

User authentication can be controlled through IP address recognition as well as EZProxy. McGraw-Hill Medical offers COUNTER 4 and the new COUNTER 5 compliant reports, which include platform, book, and multimedia reports. McGraw-Hill’s Institutional Product Activity reports allow librarians using an electronic resource management system or library management system to access and download an institution’s COUNTER reports for Access databases via the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) automated statistics gathering protocol.

Breakthrough

AccessEmergency Medicine is robust, with content copublished with the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). The patient education handouts that can be delivered in multiple languages as well as breaking out as adult, pediatric, and medicine are most useful.

It was once possible to load a specialized curriculum for our programs. It would be a more useful platform from an educational perspective if McGraw Hill made that possible again. The gamification and video features do make information attractive for those less inclined to pick up a book.

Not just for universities, AccessEmergency Medicine is a platform that will be of great service for teaching hospitals, academic medical centers, and health networks with rotating medical students, residents, and fellows, as well as practicing physicians and advanced practice health professionals.

Conflict of interest: Mary Shah has no conflict of interest in reviewing the AccessEmergency database. The Legacy Western Connecticut Health Network (now a part of Nuvance Health) has subscriptions to McGraw-Hill Medical platforms AccessEmergency Medicine, AccessMedicine, and AccessSurgery.