A clinical librarian program in the intensive care unit

Using library search service metrics to demonstrate library value and manage workload

“…Another found that, in addition to patient-care outcomes, special libraries lead to time savings for health care professionals and to general health care savings (Urquhart 2004;Winning and Beverley 2003;Wagner and Byrd 2004). A third found that the cost for a library to answer a health care question is roughly equivalent to a chest x-ray (Veenstra and Gluck 1992).…”

A comparative case study of two models of a clinical informaticist service

“…4 Preliminary research from the United States suggests that such services are effective and cost effective in improving practice in the hospital setting. 5 6 However, despite similar theoretical benefits in primary care,7 the feasibility, acceptability, and impact on patient outcomes is yet to be demonstrated in this setting. This paper describes and contrasts two projects to establish an informaticist service for primary care staff.…”

Health professionals’ attitudes towards evidence-based medicine and the role of the information professional in exploitation of the research evidence

“…With the advent of CD-ROM, there was less emphasis on mediated searching and more emphasis on end-user instruction and support [22]. For the health professional, who values clinical experience highly as a part of the clinical knowledge base, the ability of the information professional to identify articles clinically relevant has always been questionable; one study of clinical librarians noted that nearly two-thirds of the physicians had made some attempt to locate the desired information (usually by consulting colleagues or personal resources) before consulting the clinical librarian, although the clinical librarian usually found new information for them [23]. Librarians can recognise and select useful articles as effectively as practising physicians [24] and librarians' searches may be more precise than those of experienced physician end-users [25].…”