Carsten Mandt
Biography
Carsten
Mandt graduated with an MSc in Information and Library Studies from
Strathclyde University in Glasgow in 2002. He went on to work
as an Information Officer for the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines
Network (SIGN) in Edinburgh. There he was involved in the
development of evidence-based healthcare guidelines. Since
April 2003, he is employed by the Greater Glasgow Primary Care Division
(formerly Greater Glasgow Primary Care NHS Trust) where he holds
the position of Clinical Librarian.
Abstract - On
Being a Clinical Librarian in Primary Care
Originally,
clinical librarians were hospital-based acute sector librarians
who often attended ward rounds alongside clinical teams, with which
they worked very closely. In primary care, however, clinical librarians
have always been relatively uncommon.
In April 2003,
a new Clinical Librarian post was created in the Greater Glasgow
Primary Care Division (then the Greater Glasgow Primary Care NHS
Trust), in a collaborative effort by the Library Service, the R&D
Department and the Clinical Governance Department. The main purpose
of the post is to help clinicians and managers apply the existing
knowledge base of health care to their own practice. As such the
Clinical Librarian is instrumental in enabling staff to practise
in an evidence-based fashion. Ultimately, the post supports the
culture of a health care system that is aware of its responsibilities
for clinical governance at every level of the organisation.
The involvement
of the Clinical Librarian with both employed and contractual staff
in the Division, has initially been filtered through the clinical
governance structures in the Division's various services and professional
teams. These structures have provided a first contact point with
key practitioners and teams that the Clinical Librarian could work
with to support evidence-based practice. This has allowed for the
service to be marketed in a in an efficient and effective manner.
Thus, it has first and foremost been applied to projects that impact
on a wider population, rather than to answering individual questions
around the care of specific patients. Areas of involvement have
included, for example, guideline development, the support of journal
clubs, and critical appraisal skills training. On the whole, this
approach has helped ensure that the clinical librarian's time and
resources were used efficiently, while at the same time maintaining
a manageable workload for the Clinical Librarian, who is unique
in providing this kind of service to the over 7,500 potential users.
Furthermore,
the post has opened up a way of enhancing the presence and accessibility
of the Library Service. Community staff often find it difficult
to access library services that are literally ‘miles away'. In many
areas, IT provision is still poor so that electronic resources,
like, for instance, the NHS Scotland e-library that is open to all
NHS staff in Scotland, are not always easy to access for community
staff. The Clinical Librarian offers another way of taking library
services out into the community to meet the needs of staff when
and where they arise. However, so far the response has been far
greater from directly employed staff than from contractual staff
like GPs or practice nurses.
An initial
evaluation of the impact that the Clinical Librarian has had in
the Trust was undertaken at the beginning of 2004. Together with
anecdotal evidence from service users, this suggests that staff
generally experience the clinical librarian as a positive and beneficial
addition to the support services available to them, although further
investigation is needed to obtain a clearer picture of the effectiveness
and benefits of the Clinical Librarian service, as well as to gain
deeper understanding how the challenges of providing services to
contractual staff in primary care can be best met.
This page was last updated on:
16 July, 2004
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