Bringing evidence to practice: a team approach to teaching skills

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