Designing a model of professional ethics excellence for clinical librarians

Abstract

Objective: Developing and promoting professional ethics principles for clinical librarians can help the health care system balance the interests of all stakeholders, including clinical librarians, health care professionals, and patients. Therefore, the goal of this study was to design a model of professional ethics excellence for clinical librarians.Methods: The authors conducted a descriptive applied study using literature review and the delphi method. The delphi panel included eleven experts in medical librarianship, library and information sciences, or information sciences and knowledge studies.Results: After the delphi rounds, five concepts and forty-six components were identified and confirmed to provide a model of professional ethics excellence for clinical librarians. The highest-rated concept was excellence in communication. The highest-rated component was mastery in developing search strategies in information resources and databases.Conclusions: Identifying and applying principles of professional ethics among clinical librarians can enhance the professionalization of clinical librarians and result in better information services for physicians. Furthermore, incorporating these principles into the curriculum for health sciences library and information sciences students or into workshops for active clinical librarians can further formalize the profession and practice of evidence-based medicine.

Theoretical issues in medical library and information sciences' articles published in scopus and web of science databases: A scoping review

“…The clinical librarianship developmental model, medical librarian cooperation in clinical team activities model, and CREDIT model are criteria for evaluating the performance of clinical informationists and also for developing and evaluating clinical information education programs and are among the most important models that researchers have studied in this field. [ 30 31 32 33 34 ] Another model given attention to in this profession which has more supervision of the professional performance of medical informationists and librarians is the embedding librarianship model, in which its mission, feature, objectives, and performance are discussed in two articles. [ 33 35 ] Embedded librarianship supervises the potentials of librarians in educational, research, and developmental activities such that they are considered the main motivating factor in education, research, and development.…”