Dear Toby,
You mentioned "pairing up individual librarians with clinical units so that
they become part of the team and would get to know the strengths and
weaknesses and needs of the team. They'd be able to offer more than just a
paper retrieval service - they'd become involved in the units development of
its EBP skills."
I am a librarian at Cairns Library, Oxford Radcliffe Hospital Trust in
Oxford and have been lucky enough to have been invited to join Prof
Sackett's Clinical Team when they go on service (April, Sept). I attend
their ward rounds, team meetings and student teaching sessions. I have
helped team members to answer the patient-oriented clinical questions that
they generated by helping them search or by searching on their behalf
various databases (CATs, Best Evidence, Cochrane, Medline etc) and obtaining
full text of articles where required rapidly (usually same day or next day,
reliant on a quick sprint to the library and an excellent network of
regional and national sources). There was also opportunity to offer advice
on optimal search strategies and specialist information sources on the spot
as I soon discovered their needs tended to be immediate, specific and the
information required to be in a form that was easily assimilated e.g. CATs
or Best Evidence short summaries. It has been an enjoyable, enlightening and
challenging experience and the library is now investigating funding to
continue this "clinical librarian" approach to supporting evidence based
practice.
With kind regards
Anne Lusher
Enquiry Services Manager
Cairns Library
John Radcliffe Hospital
Oxford OX3 9DU
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