The value of library and information services in patient care: results of a multisite study

Objective:

The research conducted a large-scale, multisite study on the value and impact of library and information services on patient care.

Methods:

The study used: (1) 2 initial focus groups of librarians; (2) a web-based survey of physicians, residents, and nurses at 56 library sites serving 118 hospitals; and (3) 24 follow-up telephone interviews. Survey respondents were asked to base their responses on a recent incident in which they had sought information for patient care.

Results:

Of the 16,122 survey respondents, 3/4 said that they had definitely or probably handled aspects of the patient care situation differently as a result of the information. Among the reported changes were advice given to the patient (48%), diagnosis (25%), and choice of drugs (33%), other treatment (31%), and tests (23%). Almost all of the respondents (95%) said the information resulted in a better informed clinical decision. Respondents reported that the information allowed them to avoid the following adverse events: patient misunderstanding of the disease (23%), additional tests (19%), misdiagnosis (13%), adverse drug reactions (13%), medication errors (12%), and patient mortality (6%).

Conclusions:

Library and information resources were perceived as valuable, and the information obtained was seen as having an impact on patient care.

Highlights

• Library and information resources were perceived as valuable, and the information obtained was seen as having an impact on patient care.
• Electronic access to information resources from multiple locations has increased the ability of health professionals to use these resources for improved patient care.
• The roles of librarians are diversifying to include management of electronic resources, user instruction and support, specialized research and clinical information search services, and involvement in institution-level quality improvement.
• It is possible to conduct a large-scale, multisite study on the value and impact of library services on patient care.

Implications

• Ongoing studies of the value and impact of library and information resources will be important for advocacy and quality improvement.
• Community-Based Participative Research methods hold promise as a way of ensuring the relevance of future research.

     

Strategically aligning a mandala of competencies to advance a transformative vision

Objective:

This paper offers insight into the processes that have shaped the Eskind Biomedical Library''s (EBL''s) strategic direction and its alignment to the institution''s transformative vision.

Setting:

The academic biomedical library has a notable track record for developing and pioneering roles for information professionals focused on a sophisticated level of information provision that draws from and fuels practice evolutions.

Strategy:

The medical center''s overall transformative vision informs the creation of a fully aligned library strategic plan designed to effectively contribute to the execution of key organizational goals. Annual goals reflect organizational priorities and contain quantifiable and measurable deliverables. Two strategic themes, facilitating genetic literacy and preserving community history, are described in detail to illustrate the concept of goal setting.

Conclusion:

The strategic planning model reflects EBL''s adaptation to the ever-changing needs of its organization. The paper provides a characterization of a workable model that can be replicated by other institutions.     

Relations of Student Perceptions of Teacher Oral Feedback With Teacher Expectancies and Student Self-Concept

In this article, the authors investigated the relations of students’ perceptions of teachers’ oral feedback with teacher expectancies and student self-concept. A sample of 1,598 Taiwanese children in Grades 3 to 6 completed measures of student perceptions of teacher oral feedback and school self-concept. Homeroom teachers identified students for whom they had high or low expectancies. Discriminant analysis indicated student perceptions of positive and negative academic oral feedback were more important than nonacademic feedback in predicting teacher expectancies. A 2-way multivariate analysis of variance showed that boys perceived more negative oral feedback than did girls, and fifth-grade students perceived more negative oral feedback on academic and nonacademic domains than did the third- and fourth-grade students. Furthermore, structural equation modeling results indicated a particularly strong relation between positive academic oral feedback and academic self-concept.     

Correlates of Selected Test-Wiseness Skills

The study investigated personality and aptitude correlates of selected test-wiseness skills. The subjects in the study were 162 students enrolled in a freshman course in a large public university in the southern United States. Test-wiseness skills were measured using a measure of the individual’s ability to utilize deductive reasoning and item cues to correctly answer items. Personality factors were measured using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and aptitude was measured using the American College Test. Statistically significant relationships were found between the predictor variables and test-wiseness scores. Overall, the results suggest that cognitive variables have substantially more power to predict testwiseness scores than do personality variables, and that most of the predictive power of personality variables is also subsumed within the cognitive variables investigated in the study.     

Physics teaching,professional development and a socially critical ideology

The marginalization of school physics as a socially dynamic educational experience for students is a cause for concern. It is one which needs to be addressed by providers of professional development courses for physics teachers. In this paper we explore some of the issues concerning the professional development of physics teachers, taking a direction which runs counter to the traditionally accepted values inherent in the teaching of the subject. The ideology of science teaching is explored in order to provide a rationale for a socially critical professional development programme for physics teachers. A programme designed to provide a challenge to traditional teaching ideology is described; this programme has an action research component coupled with an investigation into key issues involved in a socially critical physics education.     

A Whole-school Approach to Bullying

This paper focuses on issues to do with inclusion of children currently causing considerable political concern: those who are excluded from education in mainstream school or class because they are considered too disruptive or because they are thought to have ‘social, emotional or behavioural difficulties’. The critical literature on special educational needs in its recent focus on disability has tended to avoid discussion of this group, yet they form a large and increasing proportion of the population of segregated special education. Though this paper focuses on Scotland, its content has relevance to a wider audience.