Proving Your Worth / Adding to Your Value

Hospital Librarians: From Consumer Health to Patient Education and Beyond

“…Why should a medical facility need a librarian? After all, administrators reason, everything can be found through the Internet (13). Too often over the last 20 years, we have heard and read that hospital libraries and librarians are downsized and relinquished for this idea that electronic resources are already there for access and that medical staff do not need assistance getting evidence-based data to perform their daily tasks (3).…”

“…Being prepared is the key to success. One way of being prepared is to make every effort to attend local, state, regional, and national meetings where librarians gain inspiration from presentations such as the Janet Doe Lecture delivered by Margaret Bandy of the Hospital Libraries Section at MLA 2014 (Medical Library Association Meeting 2014), entitled Pivoting: Leveraging Opportunities in a Turbulent Health Care Environment (13). Meeting attendance instills a solid form of support that assists in reenergizing and breeding new ideas for growing library services back home.…”

“…Librarians are retooling, becoming more agile, and can now be used in a line of defense against loss of patient satisfaction and the corresponding scores from survey vendors such as Press Ganey (13,15). Hospital roles for librarians may develop into a more clinical position as marketing the positive benefits of having clinical librarians increases.…”

“…As the business of providing health care becomes the model for administrators running hospitals, librarians jump to learn about using a business plan for library services. Librarians roll out courses to teach colleagues about being a business because librarians must now adjust to this paradigm or lose their jobs (13).…”

Demonstrating Your Value in a Systematic Way

“…In a previous Journal of Hospital Librarianship article (January-March 2014) by Claire Joseph and this author, entitled "Proving Your Worth/Adding to Your Value," several benchmark papers, the King, Rochester, and Value studies, were highlighted (1). Each study quantified with testimonials the valuable contributions of hospital library service.…”