Bringing evidence to practice: a team approach to teaching skills
Embargo until
Date
2008-01
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Allen Press
Abstract
Objective: The objectives were (1) to develop an
academic, graduate-level course designed for
information professionals seeking to bring evidence
to clinical medicine and public health practice and to
address, in the course approach, the ‘‘real-world’’
time constraints of these domains and (2) to further
specify and realize identified elements of the
‘‘informationist’’ concept.
Setting: The course took place at the Division of
Health Sciences Informatics, School of Medicine,
Johns Hopkins University.
Participants: A multidisciplinary faculty, selected for
their expertise in the course core competencies, and
three students, two post-graduate National Library of
Medicine (NLM) informationist fellows and one
NLM second-year associate, participated in the
research.
Intervention: A 1.5-credit, graduate-level course,
‘‘Informationist Seminar: Bringing the Evidence to
Practice,’’ was offered in October to December 2006.
In this team-taught course, a series of lectures by
course faculty and panel discussions involving
outside experts were combined with in-class
discussion, homework exercises, and a major project
that involved choosing and answering, in both oral
and written form, a real-world question based on a
case scenario in clinical or public health practice.
Conclusion: This course represents an approach that
could be replicated in other academic health centers
with similar pools of expertise. Ongoing journal
clubs that reiterate the question-and-answer process
with new questions derived from clinical and public
health practice and incorporate peer review and
faculty mentoring would reinforce the skills acquired
in the seminar.
Description
Highlights
● Interdisciplinary faculty designed and offered a graduate-
level course to teach the skills required by an
informationist in clinical and public health practice,
further elaborating a model for preparing informationists.
Implications
● This scalable approach to teaching skills for the transfer
of evidence into practice could be replicated in
academic health centers with similar pools of expertise;
such replication could contribute data toward validating
this training approach.
● Greater clarity on an appropriate, or ‘‘good enough,’’
standard of evidence for supporting point-of-action
decision making is needed.
● Based on the assumption that practicing skills increases
confidence and the likelihood that skills will
be applied, this course included mentored practice of
oral and written evidence presentation skills. Further
research could determine whether a course that includes
such mentored practice increases the likelihood
that students will apply their newly acquired
skills.
Keywords
Libraries, Medical, Librarians, Professional Role, Evidence-based Medicine/education, Interprofessional relations, Information Services
Citation
J Med Libr Assoc 2008 Jan; 96(1):50-57