Rachael Adair

Biography

Rachael is the Assistant Librarian based in the Library at the satellite University of Nottingham Medical School at Derby.  Rachael's role is to lead on the delivery of services at Derby, including liaison with the academic staff delivering a problem based learning curriculum to Graduate Entry Medicine students.  She is part of a larger Medicine and Health Sciences Subject team which is led by the Medical Librarian, Wendy Stanton.  Rachael also has an interest in the EBM strand of the GEM course.

Abstract - Integrating information skills into a problem based learning course:  experiences from a new Graduate Entry Medicine course.

As part of the expansion in medical school places, the University of
Nottingham launched a Graduate Entry Medicine (GEM) course in partnership
with Southern Derbyshire Acute Hospitals Trust in September 2003 at a new
satellite medical school in Derby. The course relates closely to the
guidance in the GMC document Tomorrow's Doctors and supports a commitment to
personal and professional development, clinical experience and life long
learning. This course is additional to the 5 year undergraduate course
established at the University since 1973.

The first 18 months of the course is delivered through Problem Based
Learning (PBL). PBL , also known as inquiry and enquiry based learning,
requires that students set their own goals and then undertake self directed
study in order to achieve their learning outcomes. Ensuring that students
have the relevant information skills to be able to exploit the resources
that are available to them is, therefore, essential if they are to use their
time effectively. This has provided both opportunities and challenges for
the provision of information skills training to the students.

There are 90 students on the course at Derby, all of whom are graduates. Out
of the cohort, 40% have a non-science background. The Medicine and Health
Sciences Subject Team has benefited from being involved in the plans for the
new School and course during the planning and development stage. The
relationship between the Subject Team and the Faculty proved crucial in
planning for the arrival of the students and the plans for information
skills. The Medical Librarian was invited to open days to meet those
students who had been accepted on the course, providing a means to discover
their requirements. A questionnaire was also sent out to the students to
discover their backgrounds and previous information skills experience.

The team has utilised the relationship with the Faculty to become involved
in the curriculum and have endeavoured to actively contribute to the course.
An Evidence based Medicine strand runs throughout the course and the
Assistant Librarian has become involved with the EBM workshops.

The aim has been to integrate information skills into the students'
curriculum, bearing in mind their background and experience, so that we
provide the relevant information at the most appropriate time. The
information skills sessions have been marketed to the students as sign up
sessions, which the students have the option of attending. Topics have been
introduced gradually throughout the course but with each session being
independent from the others.

The sessions draw on the weekly cases as a basis for illustrating the
relevant skills and resources, thus ensuring that the sessions are as
relevant as possible to the students. The weekly case has also proved to be
a means of promoting resources to the students at their point of need. PBL
uses self directed learning as a key element of the educational process,
weekly information sheets produced by the Subject team provide guidance to
the students on the most useful resources for their current case.

The experience of PBL so far and the students' information requirements have
differed in some ways from expectations and this has influenced the plans
for the next information skills programme to run from September 2004.

This page was last updated on: 16 July, 2004