Providing Access to Consumer Health Information for the Russian-Speaking Population

Abstract

Providing health information for a multi-language patient population is one of the important functions of hospital librarians today. The lack of satisfactory quality information in foreign languages often complicates a librarian's work and can compromise the whole health services delivery process for this population. This article discusses a Web site called MedInfoRus <medinforus.homestead.com/MedInfoRus.html>, which was created to help fill this gap. The Web site provides an extensive amount of medical information in Russian for a population with limited English language skills. It includes patient information, dictionaries, electronic publications, and other sources that can apply to the consumer population as well as members of the medical staff. A very important tool available at MedInfoRus is the PubMed Guide in Russian, developed by the authors for both Russian-speaking medical professionals and consumers of medical information with limited or non-existent experience in searching medical databases.