The National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Pacific Southwest Region, sponsored a panel on consumer health information services at February's Joint Meeting of MLGSCA & NCNMLG in Tucson. Moderated by Heidi Sandstrom, this panel addressed the spectrum of challenges facing librarians as they provide consumer health information services today and in the future. The four invited panel speakers were Becky Lyon, Head of the National Network Office of the National Library of Medicine (NLM); Janie Grosman, Director of the Cancer Library & Health Resource Center, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital; Mary Lou Goldstein, Manager of Library Services, Scottsdale Healthcare; and Mary Beth Train, former librarian of The Health Library, a community service of Stanford University Hospital.
Ms. Lyon discussed NLM's emerging role in improving access to consumer health information and some of the internal and external factors that have influenced this role. She announced the names of the 10 consumer health titles that NLM has begun to index in MEDLINE this year. She advocated looking for partnerships with public libraries, exploring WWW capabilities, and drawing upon the wisdom of the "experts" who are already providing consumer health information services as ways to help librarians in the hospital setting. She encouraged librarians to contact her about their consumer health information concerns.
Ms. Grosman related her experiences in meeting the patient education standards established by JCAHO, through the provision of CHI services. She emphasized the librarian's role as teacher, and the importance of finding strong allies within the organization to promote CHI services. She advocated taking an active role in developing patient education materials and in partnering with existing consumer health information services whenever possible. (see Janie's related article in this issue)
Ms. Goldstein spoke of her experiences in making her dream of establishing a Health Information Center at Scottsdale Healthcare a reality. She emphasized the importance of finding an expert in CHI services, who is willing to mentor the librarian who is just getting started in this area of health information. She included many practical tips about setting up a consumer health information service within the hospital environment and shared slides of this attractive Center with an appreciative audience!
Ms. Train explored how librarians can reach a larger audience for their collections and services through the development of a Web site. She discussed the history behind this development at The Health Library, some of the conflicting objectives that came into play, and some of the design elements that were considered for the site. She mentioned that an important design objective was to make information resources no more than three "mouse clicks" away from the home page.
Each of these speakers possesses a wealth of information, far more than could be covered in the alotted time. Since these presentations can only be briefly highlighted here, PSRML has mounted the presentation materials on our Web site at http://nnlm.gov/psr. Also because of time constraints, questions that were not addressed at the end of the session were submitted to each of the speakers following the presentation; these questions and answers have also been added to the Web site.
If you had the misfortune to miss this lively panel presentation, be a virtual audience participant by visiting the PSRML Web site. Tap into the wisdom of these experts!