Our Healthcare Workforce COI group would like to hear from you, our New England members, about new initiatives, programs and events happening in your state to promote and support the health care workforce and, if applicable, the librarians that support them.

In honor of the Medical Library Association’s National Medical Librarians Month, the National Library of Medicine highlights profiles of outstanding work by medical librarians throughout the country. We are pleased to announce the three libraries from the New England Region recognized by NLM. Check out the profiles to learn about the Baystate Medical Center Health Sciences Library’s use of audience response systems, the Heywood Hospital Medical Library’s Faith Based Community Health Information Outreach and the Yale Cushing Whitney Library’s HealthFlicks YouTube project. Learn more about the creative and innovative projects by libraries in our region.

The American workforce is a large and diverse population working in a variety of environments and being trained in programs ranging from community colleges to university medical schools.  About 10% of the New England workforce is employed in healthcare fields and the newly formed Healthcare Workforce Community of Interest will explore these professions and the roles librarians have, possibly identifying new ones.

Since the COI was created, Lauri Fennell (the NN/LM NER facilitator of this group) and Pat Gorman (the COI leader) have been brainstorming and discussing various ways to approach this task.  We’ve come up with a number of ideas but need input, suggestions and assistance.

Pat works in a community college that has an associate level nursing program, a dental hygienist program, and a variety of allied health programs. Many of you will have varying experiences and roles that will be of value to this group. We will hold web-meetings to discuss ideas and perhaps develop a program, invite speakers or design a pilot project.

We hope that you will join us to bring your experience, thoughts, and suggestions to this group.

A recent e-mail communication was sent to those who subscribed to this Community of Interest through the NER’s new e-mail subscription service.  If you have not signed up to receive the eNews via e-mail on the topic of the Healthcare Workforce you can do so by going clicking here Subscribe to NER eNews, then making your selections. Note if you receive a message indicating that you are subscribed it means we sent you an initial message; you will still need to proceed in order to make topic selections and receive future e-mail communications from us.

Registration is under way for Tufts Health Care Institute’s and Tufts University School of Medicine’s 15th annual conference, “Information Mastery: A Practical Approach to Evidence-Based Care.” The conference will be held in Boston on November 10-12, 2011.

This interactive conference will provide tools and techniques for efficient, effective, and evidence-based information management at the point-of-care . The first and second days of the course focus on developing the skills of information mastery – i.e., to find, evaluate and apply the best evidence for everyday practice. The third day is a special workshop focused on educational strategies that you can use to teach these skills to professionals-in-training.

This conference is designed for physicians, advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists, and health sciences librarians.

Register by September 30 to take advantage of early registration rates and group discounts. For more information about the course and how past attendees have applied what they learned, or to register, please visit http://www.thci.org/programs/informationmanagement/2011/index.asp, or call (617) 636-1000. Please share this information with your colleagues who may be interested.

Gail Y. Hendler, MLS
Head of Information and Access Services
Tufts University Hirsh Health Sciences Library
145 Harrison Avenue
Boston, MA 02111
(V)617-636-3969
(F)617-636-4039
email: Gail.Hendler@Tufts.edu
http://www.library.tufts.edu/hsl/