OVC‘s next Web Forum will be on providing services to victims of bullying. As with their other forums, you can submit questions in advance, and then return on March 18th at 2pm ET for the live discussion. To read more about the forum and the featured experts, click here. To submit questions, follow this link. An index of previous forum topics, with archived questions and responses, can be found here.

I was asked yesterday what my go-to resources are for information on the Web. If I had to put together my can’t live without list for growing myself professionally, what would be on it? Obviously, my choices are personal ones, based on my forensic specialties (SA, DV, elder abuse) and my other revenue-generating interests (technology, healthcare economics, writing, presenting). Probably not universally appealing stuff. But if pressed (which I was), you can check out my top 10 after the jump:

Davis Plus, those nice people who make the drug guides, have an online wound care tutorial that’s brief and easy to use (requires Flash). For those of you who need a little refresher on wound types and dressings (and some gnarly photos to go along with them), here’s a little quicky for your viewing pleasure. There’s also a self-assessment at the end, should you want to test your knowledge.

I had you at “gnarly photos”, didn’t I?

The University of Utah Eccles Health Science Library has an online firearms tutorial available here. It’s easy to use and has almost no bells and whistles (but it has photos!) so you should be able to view this on any computer. I’m not sure when the course was last updated (some of the statistics look old), but the mechanics of firearms and the appearance of gunshot wounds haven’t really changed, so age shouldn’t be a significant issue. It was created for pathologists, meaning it has a medical, rather than law enforcement, flavor.

Hepatitis is the often forgotten conversation when it comes to sexual assault medical-forensic care. I find a lot of folks are skipping over it in trainings and in working individually with patients, even though we know that many of our patients may be at greater risk for contracting hepatitis than HIV. The University of Washington and the Seattle STD/HIV Prevention Training Center have teamed up for an online course on viral hepatitis, funded by the CDC.

Sunday is International Women’s Day, and the 2009 United Nations theme being used for the day, fittingly enough, is Women and Men United to End Violence Against Women and Girls. Social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, have created networks in honor of IWD; there are also almost one thousand events in more than 60 countries in honor of the day. This includes more than 300 events in the US and Canada, alone. Although some of these events have already occurred, there are still plenty happening over the weekend.

Let us know if you end up attending one!

There’s a lot of chatter in my on-line world right now about the so-called No-Lie MRI (or as it’s known in the scientific community, fMRI, f=functional). Some people believe brain imaging, alone or as one tool in a larger arsenal, may provide the ability to determine if someone is lying. The legal world, not surprisingly, is fascinated by this concept, but it seems like it’s a long way from being able to meet Daubert/Frye standards. Still, people are certainly talking about the potential this technology could have and the ethics of using it (on assailants, yes, but also on victims).

Audio Digest has free podcasts available on a range of disaster-related healthcare topics. You can download audio files on PTSD, principles for initial response, infectious disease, incident management and disaster mental health. Even better, they have kindly segmented the files, so you have the option of downloading just parts of the podcasts or the whole megillah.

Looking for more on FGM? Check out the Female Genital  Cutting Education and Networking Project for a host of resources and up-to-date information.