Title of project: Renal Unit ‘Adopt a Librarian’ pilot project
Project team: Victoria Kirk, Clinical Librarian; Gwyneth Marshman, Clinical Librarian; Lauren Gould, Senior Staff Nurse; Jon Casey, Clinical Nurse Lead (Renal)
Resources required
Staffing: The Clinical Librarian will require dedicated time to:
- be available on the ward for 2 hours per week
- attend the Multi Disciplinary Team (MDT) meeting to feed back on search results and progress
- conduct any searches or training that results from the library surgery
- record and collate the necessary data in order to evaluate the pilot
A pilot service will enable staff time requirements to be measured in more detail.
Library Assistant support may also be required for the additional administrative tasks that may be involved (e.g. processing search requests).
Electronic resources: The Clinical Librarian will need access to the evidence base via:
- Health related databases
- Evidence based resources
Timeframe: The pilot will be conducted between 1st February 2011 and 30th April 2011 [may be subject to change].
Description of product/service: The Renal Unit has been successful in attaining Level 2 Practice Development Unit status from the University of Leeds. In order to drive forward practice development, the Renal team would benefit from having regular access to a qualified health information professional at the point of need.
The information professional, as part of the multidisciplinary team, can encourage the consultation of research literature and provide a mechanism for getting research into practice, as well as stimulating a questioning and learning culture within healthcare teams.
A Clinical Librarian will be available on the Renal Unit (Ward 31) at Arrowe Park Hospital for 2 hours per week at a specified time to provide a ‘library surgery’ to staff and students on placement.Results from evidence searches and progress on the pilot will be reported back to the Renal Multi Disciplinary Team (MDT) meeting.
Services available to staff and students via the ‘library surgery’ will include:
- Individual assistance with searching for the latest evidence / literature searching
- Tailored ‘ad hoc’ training in accessing health information resources (e.g. NHS Evidence, Pubmed, Cochrane Library)
- Collecting literature searches on topics resulting from patient care on the ward (e.g. issues arising from ward round) and feeding back results to the team
- General enquiries and advice
The project will be conducted as a 3 month pilot. An evaluation of the pilot will determine if it is feasible to launch this as a permanent service.
Alignment to local, regional and national drivers: This service fulfils part of the ‘vision of the future’ identified in the ILS strategy, to ‘increase support offered to divisions by the Clinical Librarian service’. The ILS strategy states that one of the purposes of the ILS is to ‘provide support to clinical teams in the workplace and enable the evidence based decision making process.’
This service fulfills the ILS objectives to support:
- Clinical effectiveness and governance
- Education and training, professional development and life-long learning
- High quality evidence-based health care
The service supports the clinical governance agenda in the Trust.
The service supports the four key purposes of health libraries as identified by the Peter Hill Review:
- Clinical decision making by patients, their carers as appropriate, and health professional
- Commissioning decision and health policy making
- Research
- Lifelong learning by health professionals.
The service also supports the vision of the 2010 white paper, Equity and excellence: liberating the NHS, which highlights the need for patient care quality standards to be based on the ‘best available evidence’ (p.23).
Intended outcome for customer / organisation / library: Outcomes measured will be the amount of activity generated as a result (e.g. literature searches). Additionally, a very brief evaluation questionnaire will be completed by each person who utilises the ‘library surgery’. The questionnaire results will provide some impact data as well as helping to identify any ‘critical incidents’ that require follow-up.
Next steps: The project will be reviewed in May 2011
Tagged: Clinical librarians, Outreach