Brittany R. Heer, MLIS  
Health Sciences Librarian  
Butler University Libraries 

LWW Health Library PA Rotations/Specialties is an essential resource for the clinical year of the physician assistant (PA) curriculum. It includes 48 authoritative textbooks across rotation disciplines, self-assessment quizzes, exam preparation materials, over 150 case studies, and a journal club feature to enhance clinical reasoning and support the integration of evidence-based medicine. 

The intended audience for LWW Health Library PA Rotations/Specialties is second year PA students who need reference and assessment materials to support their clinical rotations. PA instructors, preceptors, and health sciences librarians will also benefit from familiarity with this resource as it can be heavily integrated into the curriculum and support students’ needs in a wide variety of ways. 

Content 

LWW Health Library PA Rotations/Specialties serves to support clinical PA students during their rotations and PANCE preparations. As a subscription-based product, users can access LWW Health Library PA Rotations/Specialties through institutional access. Textbooks, cases, and the journal club are available without a personal LWW account, but a free personal LWW account is required to access the self-assessment features. 

Rotation specialties covered include emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, OB/GYN, pediatrics, psychiatry, and surgery. Top Wolters Kluwer textbooks include, but are not limited to: Essentials of Family Medicine, 7^th Edition, Smith et al. (2018), Primary Care Medicine: Office Evaluation and Management of the Adult Patient, 8^th Edition, Goroll and Mully, Jr.(2020), Beckmann and Ling’s Obstetrics and Gynecology, 9^th Edition, Casanova et al. (2023), Kaplan and Sadock’s Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry, 5^th Edition, Boland et al. (2023), The Washington Manual of Medical Therapeutics, 37^th Edition, Ancha et al. (2022), Essentials of General Surgery and Surgical Specialties, 7th Edition, Lawrence et al. (2025), Rosen & Barkin’s 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Consult, 6^th Edition, Schaider et al. (2019), and Studying a Study and Testing a Test: Reading Evidence-Based Health Research, 7^th Edition, Riegelman and Nelson (2020). Additional books include the Blueprints titles, the Step-Up titles, and many exam preparation titles, each series covering the rotation specialties, respectively. 

Cases can be filtered by one of the seven specialties or easily searched by keyword or topic. Example cases include management of burns involving an accelerant, evaluation of chronic malaise, and renal diseases. Each case presents a clinical scenario and how to work through the patient evaluation and physical exam, diagnosis, and treatment, and then a discussion and reflection follow. Many cases are directly related to specific textbook titles, such as Primary Care Medicine: Office Evaluation and Management of the Adult Patient, 8th Edition, Goroll and Mully, Jr. (2020), Essentials of Family Medicine, 7th Edition, Smith et al (2018), the Step-Up titles, and the Blueprints titles. While not all cases provide a journal club section, many recommend related articles for follow-up and discussion, especially cases that are focused on interprofessional education. 

The journal club feature is organized in a module-style format, drawing materials from Studying a Study and Testing a Test: Reading Evidence-Based Health Research, 7^th Edition, Riegelman and Nelson (2020). Each module is composed of short, self-guided PowerPoint-style presentations so students can take their time evaluating the case or article while integrating EBM best practices. A pre- and post-test module begins and ends the journal club modules to assess student learning across the 10 modules. 

LWW Health Library products are provided by Lippincott, a subsidiary of Wolters Kluwer, a well-known and highly regarded publisher of health sciences books, journals, academic databases, and clinical support tools. Individual authors and editors are listed for all indexed textbooks available through the database. 

Features / Functionality 

LWW Health Library PA Rotations/Specialties offers an easy and accessible search experience through a simple search engine, allowing users to quickly find results to meet their information needs. The basic search will meet most users’ abilities and needs, as one can quickly narrow down a broad search with limiters, such as rotation specialty, subject, content, textbook title, or tags. The basic search feature defaults to the textbook and multimedia results. If users wish to see journal content, one can easily toggle between the retrieved results. Journal results can be narrowed by CME/CE, supplemental digital content, date range, and article access type – all articles or Open Access articles. The advanced search feature may disappoint expert searchers, but it offers novice users the ability to control their search by “any, all, or exact” phrases, authors, or subject (rotation specialty) before adding additional filters in the retrieved results. 

In addition to the curriculum content, students will appreciate the self-assessment feature as they can take pre-made quizzes covering dozens of topics across rotation specialties as well as create their own personalized quizzes. A highlight of the self-assessment feature is that students can keep track of their progress in any quiz and easily return to an unfinished quiz they wish to revisit.  

Faculty will appreciate the cases and journal club features to enhance their own course material as they can embed content into their local LMS and in their own classroom presentations. Users can customize their experience through their unique personal LWW account by “favoriting” content, creating folders, and tracking their self-assessment. Users can also share materials via email and social media and easily generate citations for presentations and research papers. 

While no dedicated mobile app is available, the platform is optimized for mobile devices, which makes it especially convenient for students on rotation and in clinics. Further, the publisher considers and incorporates accessibility in the platform design: users can listen to most pages, particularly the textbooks. Both of these features increase the utility of the product by expanding options for PA students. 

The LWW Health Library homepage immediately recommends that users create their personal LWW account to enhance their search and learning experience, especially to access the self-assessment feature. Students may find this cumbersome, but the homepage banner has a “learn more” link that walks users through the creation of their free account. 

Business Model 

LWW Health Library PA Rotations/Specialties is a subscription-based resource. Pricing is only available by contacting a sales representative for quotes. Contracts can be negotiated for annual subscriptions or for multiyear subscription pricing. COUNTER and non-COUNTER usage data is available for LWW Health Library and can be accessed by logging in to the administration portal.  

Users are able to access LWW Health Library PA Rotations/Specialties through institutional access. Most content is available without a personal LWW account, but a free personal LWW account is required to access the self-assessment features. Many authentication systems, such as OpenAthens and Shibboleth, are supported to allow institutional access to the database. 

Breakthrough 

LWW Health Library PA Rotations/Specialties will be a beneficial addition to any library that supports a PA program. Students, faculty, and health sciences librarians will appreciate the authoritative and comprehensive PA curricular content that supports clinical learning, reasoning, and PANCE preparation through self-assessment and case studies. Additionally, the indexed textbooks provide content that has significant appeal and usefulness for other allied health professional programs. Lippincott is a well-known and highly regarded publisher of health sciences books, journals, academic databases, and clinical support tools. Information professionals can feel confident in the product as well as their representatives’ support in ensuring patron and user satisfaction of the product.