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Cannabis use continues to increase worldwide, and a number of nation states are changing their cannabis policies. Policy changes require research into key populations, namely, people who use cannabis. This study aims to examine sociodemographic differences of young Finns who reported using cannabis mainly for self-medication versus mainly recreationally, as well as their reported effects of cannabis use.

The data come from an anonymous online survey (N = 247, 70.0% males, 25.9% females, 4.1% other) that was analysed using multiple logistic regression. The authors focused on whether various demographic indicators differed between those who reportedly used cannabis mainly for recreational purposes and mainly for self-medicinal purposes. The authors also qualitatively examined the respondents’ experienced effects of cannabis, both desired and undesired.

Being older and female, living in a smaller city and earlier age of initiation of cannabis use were statistically significant in predicting the medicinal use of cannabis. The majority of recreational effects were related to themes such as relaxation and pleasure, but many participants also reported desired medical effects. Similarly, many participants reported several undesired effects.

Understanding especially young people’s motivations to use cannabis, which include using it for various medical effects, can improve the design of harm reduction and treatment programmes as well as enhance the well-being of people who use cannabis.

This study gives a nuanced account of sociodemographic factors and motivations of young people who use cannabis in Finland as well as the reported effects it has on them, which complements data from national drug surveys.

To investigate ethnic group differences in the utilization of preventive medical care services among U.S. Asian and Latino immigrant adults.

Using data from the 2002–2003 National Latino and Asian American Study, we examined whether differences exist in the reporting of any preventive physical care or dental/optician visit during the last year across Asian and Latino immigrant groups. Following, we applied Andersen’s (1995) Behavioral Model of Health Services Use to assess how ethnic disparities in preventive care use are a function of predisposing, enabling/impeding, and need-based factors.

Descriptive results showed that among Latinos, a much lower proportion of Mexican immigrants reported a preventive medical care visit during the last year than either Cuban or Puerto Rican immigrants. Asian immigrants show less variation in use, but significant differences still exist with Filipino immigrants reporting the highest level of use, followed by Vietnamese and then Chinese immigrants. Logistic regression models also indicated that predisposing characteristics, especially aspects of acculturation status, contribute strongly to ethnic group differences in preventive care use, while enabling/disabling and need-based characteristics are less important.

While studies of medical care use often treat Asians and Latinos as homogeneous groups, our findings illustrate the need for a more detailed view of the foreign-born population. Findings also highlight the role of acculturation status in shaping group differences in preventive medical care use – and as such, the importance of considering these differences when promoting the use of timely preventive care services among immigrant populations.

How can organizations use strategic frames to develop support for illegal and stigmatized markets? Drawing on interviews, direct observation, and the analysis of 2,497 press releases, I show how pro-cannabis activists used distinct framing strategies at different stages of institutional development to negotiate the moral boundaries surrounding medical cannabis, diluting the market’s stigma in the process. Social movement organizations first established a moral (and legal) foothold for the market by framing cannabis as a palliative for the dying, respecting moral boundaries blocking widespread exchange. As market institutions emerged, activists extended this frame to include less serious conditions, making these boundaries permeable.

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether undergraduate students in the College of Health Sciences in Niger Delta University are information literate, and to determine whether they are aware of and use different information resources including electronic ones, and to assess their ability to evaluate information before use.

Questionnaire and interview methods were used to collect data from the students.

The students mostly rely on textbooks, medical journals, the internet, colleagues, and the Nigerian National University Commission's virtual library for information. They rarely use electronic resources such as MEDLINE, HINARI, the Cochrane Library, and EbscoHost. This could be because of a lack of awareness and skills necessary to search databases. Problems such as lack of time, the challenge of locating “good citable stuff”, inability to use effectively the medical library, and poor skills in information searching were mentioned. The study recommends that medical librarians and faculty should collaborate in integrating information literacy skills into the medical school curriculum.

This paper may help inform discussion about students' competences for locating, selecting, evaluating and using information essential for lifelong learning.

Whilst there is a growing body of research which discusses the use of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) (otherwise known as “drones”) to transport medical supplies, almost all reported cases employ short range aircraft. The purpose of this paper is to consider the advantages and challenges inherent in the use of long endurance remotely piloted aircraft systems (LE-RPAS) aircraft to support the provision of medical supplies to remote locations – specifically “medical maggots” used in maggot debridement therapy (MDT) wound care.

After introducing both MDT and the LE-RPAS technology, the paper first reports on the outcomes of a case study involving 11 semi-structured interviews with individuals who either have experience and expertise in the use of LE-RPAS or in the provision of healthcare to remote communities in Western Australia. The insights gained from this case study are then synthesised to assess the feasibility of LE-RPAS assisted delivery of medical maggots to those living in such geographically challenging locations.

No insuperable challenges to the concept of using LE-RPAS to transport medical maggots were uncovered during this research – rather, those who contributed to the investigations from across the spectrum from operators to users, were highly supportive of the overall concept.

The paper offers an assessment of the feasibility of the use of LE-RPAS to transport medical maggots. In doing so, it highlights a number of infrastructure and organisational challenges that would need to be overcome to operationalise this concept. Whilst the particular context of the paper relates to the provision of medical support to a remote location of a developed country, the core benefits and challenges that are exposed relate equally to the use of LE-RPAS in a post-disaster response. To this end, the paper offers a high-level route map to support the implementation of the concept.

The paper proposes a novel approach to the efficient and effective provision of medical care to remote Australian communities which, in particular, reduces the need to travel significant distances to obtain treatment. In doing so, it emphasises the importance in gaining acceptance of both the use of MDT and also the operation of RPAS noting that these have previously been employed in a military, as distinct from humanitarian, context.

The paper demonstrates how the use of LE-RPAS to support remote communities offers the potential to deliver healthcare at reduced cost compared to conventional approaches. The paper also underlines the potential benefits of the use of MDT to address the growing wound burdens in remote communities. Finally, the paper expands on the existing discussion of the use of RPAS to include its capability to act as the delivery mechanism for medical maggots.

This paper aims to present the results of a study which was carried out to find out whether the undergraduate students in the College of Health Sciences in Delta State University are aware of and fully utilize the medical databases and other online information resources within and outside the medical library.

A questionnaire and interview methods were used to elicit data from the students.

The results revealed that majority of the students are not aware and do not use the online information resources such as: MEDLINE, HINARI, CINAHL databases, NUC virtual library as sources of information to retrieve materials related to medical literature. This could be as a result of lack of training for information literacy skills and ineffective user education programmes in the medical libraries and medical schools to equip the medical students with necessary skills to use the medical databases and other online information resources. Problems such as lack of skills to use the online information resources, lack of time, poor user education programmes, and slowness of server were mentioned by the students as some factors militating against the effective use of online information resources.

The findings will be useful for medical librarians and faculty in highlighting the need to collaborate in integrating information literacy skills into the medical school curricula in developing countries. Paper type Research paper

The purpose of this paper is to apply an extended technology acceptance model to examine the medical data analyst’s intention to use medical big data processing technique.

Questionnaire survey method was used to collect data from 293 medical data analysts and analyzed with the assistance of structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that the perceived usefulness, social influence and attitude are important to the intention to use medical big data processing technique, and the direct effect of perceived usefulness on intention to use is greater than social influence and attitude. The perceived usefulness is influenced by perceived ease of use. Attitude is influenced by perceived usefulness, and attitude acts as a mediator between perceived usefulness and usage intention. Unexpectedly, attitude is not influenced by perceived ease of use and social influence.

This research examines the medical data analyst’s intention to use medical big data processing technique and provides several implications for using medical big data processing technique.

This paper aims to focus on the information literacy skills and how the resources are being used by medical students of Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute (MGMCRI), Pondicherry, India. The main aim is to determine the medical students use, purpose, search strategies and sources through which aware and literacy skills acquired. Further, this paper aims to bring out the problems faced.

A survey method was conducted through a structured questionnaire distributed among 120 medical students from first year to fourth year. Stratified random sampling was used for selection of students.

Findings of the study revealed that medical students largely used medical databases such as Bentham Sciences, ProQuest, PubMed and MedlinePlus. Further, the paper reveals that majority used health information for updating their knowledge and to acquire general information. The students’ information literacy level found minimal, which may be the reason majority of the students found difficulty in locating the desired materials followed by irrelevant information, inadequate e-resources and lack of awareness reported some extent.

The recommendations made based on the study are expected to be beneficial to the authorities and library administration of the surveyed institution to take appropriate measures for effective utilization of resources.

This paper aims to report the results of a study investigating the relevance criteria used by health care professionals when seeking medical images.

Data were collected from 29 participants using a think‐aloud protocol and face‐to‐face interviews and analysed using the Straussian version of grounded theory (GT).

The results show that participants made use of 15 relevance criteria, although they agreed on topicality being the most important. The findings suggest that users apply different criteria in different situations when evaluating the relevancy of medical images.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, there have been few studies that investigate relevance judgments for visually orientated documents. Thus, this study helps to contribute to the understanding of medical image resources and the information needs of health care professionals. A clear understanding of the medical image information needs of health care professionals is also vital to the design process and development of medical image retrieval systems.

Seeking to leverage on benefits of personal mobile device use, medical schools and healthcare facilities are increasingly embracing the use of personal mobile devices for medical education and healthcare delivery through bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies. However, empirical research findings that could guide the development of BYOD policies are scarce. Available research is dominated by studies that were guided by technocentric approaches, hence seemingly overlooking the complexities of the interactions of actors in mobile device technologies implementation. The purpose of this study was to use the actor–network theory to explore the potential role of a BYOD policy at the University of Botswana’s Faculty of Medicine.

Purposive sampling was used to select the participants and interviews, focus group discussions, observations and document analysis were used to collect data. Data were collected from 27 participants and analysed using grounded theory techniques. Emerging themes were continually compared and contrasted with incoming data to create broad themes and sub-themes and to establish relationships or patterns from the data.

The results suggest that the potential roles for BYOD policy include promoting appropriate mobile device use, promoting equitable access to mobile devices and content, and integrating mobile devices into medical education, healthcare delivery and other institutional processes.

BYOD policy could be conceptualized and researched as a “script” that binds actors/actants into a “network” of constituents (with shared interests) such as medical schools and healthcare facilities, mobile devices, internet/WiFi, computers, software, computer systems, medical students, clinical teachers or doctors, nurses, information technology technicians, patients, curriculum, information sources or content, classrooms, computer labs and infections.

BYOD is a policy that seeks to represent the interests (presents as a solution to their problems) of the key stakeholders such as medical schools, healthcare facilities and mobile device users. BYOD is introduced in medical schools and healthcare facilities to promote equitable access to mobile devices and content, appropriate mobile device use and ensure distribution of liability between the mobile device users and the institution and address the implication of mobile device use in teaching and learning.

The BYOD policy is a comprehensive solution that transcends other institutional policies and regulations to fully integrate mobile devices in medical education and healthcare delivery.