Health information and libraries journal
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Comparative Study
Undertaking an information-needs analysis of the emergency-care physician to inform the role of the clinical librarian: a Greek perspective.
The primary focus of this pilot study was to gain a better understanding of the information needs of emergency-care clinicians. The secondary focus was to compare the traditional current practice of information provision within other emergency departments in Greek hospitals, with the new model of clinical librarianship (CL). ⋯ Nowadays, health services are facing organizational change. The introduction of new technology, and rapid growth of medical knowledge creates a demand for new ways of providing information. Clinical librarian programmes may deliver patients specific information in a timely manner. The mission of the clinical librarian is to facilitate access to quality information which is necessary for improving health, and to act as an informationist in the emergency department.
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Review Comparative Study
The value and impact of information provided through library services for patient care: a systematic review.
An updated systematic review was carried out of research studies looking at the value and impact of library services on health outcomes for patients and time saved by health professionals. ⋯ Research studies suggest that professionally led library services have an impact on health outcomes for patients and may lead to time savings for health-care professionals. The available studies vary greatly in quality but the better quality studies also suggest positive impacts. Good practice can be gathered from these studies to guide the development of a pragmatic survey for library services that includes the direct effects for patients among the outcome measures.
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Doctors need information skills to deliver health care in the 21st century. There is concern that those who trained before the 'information age' will be inadequately equipped for their work. ⋯ Both junior and senior doctors have basic computer literacy, but nearly half of this population identify the use of database software as a training need. In addition, there are several health informatics topics of which a large proportion of doctors, particularly the juniors, have little knowledge, but which have not been identified as training needs. Some recommendations are made for provision of in-house health informatics education for doctors.
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For general practitioners (GPs), an important obstacle to practising evidence-based medicine is lack of time. An evidence-based answering service was developed that took over searching and appraisal of medical evidence from the GPs. GPs sent in questions, and the informationist formulated the answers. Our objectives were to find out if such an evidence-based answering service was feasible, including assessing the effect of the answers on GPs and their patients, as reported by the GPs. ⋯ This study indicates that an evidence-based answering service can have an impact on GPs and their patients. Librarians can provide an evidence-based answering service for GPs and their patients. The evidence-based answering service for GPs in this study had an impact on 81% of the GPs and on 52% of their patients. Although for one-third of the questions no evidence-based answer was found, this message in itself had an impact on 89% of the GPs. An informationist as mediator between medical information and doctors can save doctors' time.