Health care continuing education (CE) professionals and health sciences librarians have many common goals including ( I ) identibing information seeking behaviors of health professionals, ( 2 ) providing the information that hasDirectly or indirectly, health sciences librarians and continuing education (CE) professionals have long been working toward the same goal: ensuring that health professionals have the information and knowledge they need to deliver quality health care. Historically, CE and libraries could be passive providers of information, assembling collections of books and journals and offering standard CE courses on a regular schedule. Several factors have made it necessary, however, to become significantly more proactive in the educational process; these changes include the increase in the sheer amount of medical knowledge available, increased medical specialization, and new information technologies that have transformed the health care workplace and information management capabilities. Educational activities must now provide access to up-to-date information, synthesized for practical application in the workplace. Facilitating lifelong learning opportunities has been a common pursuit of both professions, and many opportunities are provided for collaboration in studying information needs and delivering information for improved health care practice.
Common Goals Identifying Information Seeking BehaviorsBased on a workshop presented at the 20th Annual Meeting of the Alliance for Continuing Medical Education, Phoenix, Arizona, January 13, 1995.How do health professionals look for information to support patient care? Physician information needs and use of information sources are topics of 235
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