ISTM News

Professional and Education Committee (PEC)

The Professional Education and Training Committee (PEC) of the ISTM has developed a new initiative entitled "Expert Opinion" as an educational vignette to appear on the ISTM web site.

Expert Opinion presents a pre- or post-travel quandary that is answered by an invited ISTM member with expertise in the topic discussed. The international membership includes varied clinical approaches, and the expert is offering only an opinion on a particular subject and should not be taken as a directive for all patients or cases. The PEC encourages members to discuss additional aspects relating to the scenario on the listserve. The cases and Expert Opinions will be archived so that members have the ability to review previous scenarios.

This new feature will appear in the section under "Education and Training" (subtitle Education and Scientific Information) with new scenarios and opinions presented on a quarterly basis.  The site is for members only, and log-in will be required. Click the following link to the case: http://www.istm.org/webforms/members/active/opinion.

We are assessing the possibility of accreditation for continuing medical education for physicians (CME) and continuing education for nurses (CE).  The process requires that you complete a CME or CE form, after participating in the Expert Opinion exercise, with demographic information and post-test questions in order to receive credits.  You would then mail, fax, or email the forms to respective administrative offices for credit. 

Publication Committee

The transition to our new publisher, Blackwell, has proceeded smoothly. I wish to thank especially the hard work of Robert Steffen and his right hand, Gaby Bossard. On the Blackwell side, Sherri Frank deserves special mention. ISTM members should have no trouble accessing the journal electronically via the ISTM home page, but let us know if you are encountering any problems. Please bear with us as we shortly make all past issues available in PDF. Other behind-the-scenes activities include revamping the ease with which authors can use their own published material for educational purposes and facilitating the request for use of copyrightedmaterial in subsequent articles.

Authors should review the new "Instruction for Authors" and note that submission can now be effected online via "Manuscript Central", which will be very helpful for peer reviewers and collection of statistics as well. We would like to see our impact factor higher than 0.766. I would encourage all authors to try to quote articles published in JTM whenever reasonable and regardless of where you are submitting your article.

I would also like to recognize the excellent work of Hans Dieter Nothdurft, our web-editor, who has done stellar work to make our website more user-friendly and informative. If you have not browsed the website recently, I encourage you to do so. You will find, for instance, that a new feature "Expert Opinions" has been added to "Member Services", thanks to the initiative and hard work of the Professional Education Committee.

Finally, we have collected ideas for our Evidence Bases for Clinical Practice and hope to assign topics to writing panels in the near future. It is still not too late to share your thoughts on what subjects you wish to see developed. Feel free to contact me at charles.d.ericsson@uth.tmc.edu.

Charlie Ericsson