Impact of a Six Month Clinical Librarian Trial in a Tertiary Care Centre: a Controlled Study

1
Impact of a Six Month Clinical Librarian Trial in
a Tertiary Care Centre a Controlled Study

• Elizabeth Aitken
• eaitken_at_ucalgary.ca
• International Clinical Librarians Conference
• June 14, 2011

2
Beginnings

• Paradigm Shifts
• Clinical Librarian programs
• Intervention pilot in W21C
• Hypothesis Even with information literacy
  education and the moving of systems toward easy
  interfaces, improved access and evidence-based
  medicine synthesis services, a clinical team can
  benefit from a clinical librarian intervention.

3
Health Information Network
4
Service Points
Tom Baker Cancer Knowledge Centre
Rockyview General Hospital Knowledge Centre
Health Sciences Library (UofC)
Alberta Childrens Hospital Knowledge Centre
Women's Health Knowledge Centre
Peter Lougheed Knowledge Centre
5
Setting Subjects

• Ward of the 21st Century
• Yellow Blue Teams
• Attendings
• Schedules

6
Intervention

• Morning handover, Intake, Review Patient List
• Formal Education opportunities
• Being present
• Three roles
• Education mentorship to encourage independent
  ebm information retrieval
• Expedited search support and full-text delivery
  on request
• Anticipatory info provision based on attendance
  at bedside

7
Process Methods

• To Provide Clinical Information
• fast turnaround patients dont stay long
  usually (IM is complex), physician changes often
• aim was ebm at bedside quickly mixed results
• process POC tools, clinical queries,
  medline/embase
• To Measure the Intervention
• Pre and post survey

8
(No Transcript)
9
(No Transcript)
10
Survey Results

• Figure 1 
• Agreement with a statement that clinical
  librarian can be helpful in clinical areas

11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
Qualitative comments made by the intervention
group participants

• Useful to have someone dedicated to lit searches
• We are more likely to use resources as w/o
  librarian resources available, we forget to
  look things up
• We just don't have the time, to search esp _at_
  our clerk stage Finding evidence to help direct
  clinical decision making
• And from the blue team
• Looked like the other team was learning a lot!

15
Study Characteristics

• Limitations
• Single centre, single service, small sample
• Self-reported behaviours
• Teaching environment
• Potential for contamination of control team
• What does this study add?
• Large tertiary care centre, representative MTU
• Controlled study
• Impact on diagnosis treatment plans

16
Reviewers Comments

• Informationist versus Clinical Librarian

17
Reviewers Comments

• Does a change in treatment plan or diagnosis
  automatically infer better patient care?

Donabedian A. 1980. Methods for deriving criteria
for assessing the quality of medical care.
Medical Care Review 37(7)653698. Donabedian A.
1988. The quality of care. How can it be
assessed? Journal of the American Medical
Association 260(12)17431748.
18
Whats next?

• Article
• Multi- pre-appraised search tool
• How can we create a clinical librarianship
  program to work across Calgary Zone

19
Questions