Award Report: Enhancing the Quality of PubMed Instruction through Improving Library Training Facilities–Staten Island University Hospital
As part of the Staten Island University Hospital’s continuing mission to give the trainees in residency programs outstanding clinical and academic training, the Medical Library provides information literacy instruction to medical residents as a component of their curriculum. For the last few years, two-hour training sessions have been given to the groups of residents on a regular basis. Hands-on instruction in searching PubMed, given by Yelena Friedman, Director of the Medical Library, is aimed at teaching residents the skills necessary to quickly, efficiently, and independently locate high-quality, evidence-based medical information, which can be applied in a point-of-care setting.
The teaching took place in the library office, which did not allow every trainee to actively participate in hands-on training. The library staff, along with administration and faculty, has been looking a long time for ways to improve this situation. The opportunity came with the relocation to the newly built Regina McGinn Education Center: in the process of planning the new library, the Library Director requested a separate room designated for collaborative studies and training sessions. This request was filled. It was decided to equip the new room with laptops and a wall TV to allow training to be conducted in an interactive mode.
The project has been funded mostly with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. NO1-LM-6-3501 with the New York University School of Medicine.
In February 2011 the first training sessions took place in the newly equipped library training center (seen in the above photo). In the evaluations filled by the trainees at the end of each session a question whether facilities (room and equipment) were adequate – the only question that had always received low grades – finally got 5 of 5 on a grading scale. The project has not only enabled improved quality of PubMed instruction for residents, but has also enabled the library to extend training to other groups of users, including nurses, students, and attending physicians. The library also plans to use the new training center for lectures, webinars, and hand-on training sessions on a variety of topics, such as improving nursing research skills, advanced PubMed searching, evaluating web resources, and many others.
Yelena Friedman, Medical Library Director
Staten Island University Hospital
Staten Island, NY
