Informationist? Internal Medicine Rounds with a Clinical Medical Librarian

Abstract

In discussion of the “informationist,” the clinical medical librarian (CML) often is used as a model of a specialist who serves as an information resource for a healthcare team. At Truman Medical Center-Hospital Hill, a clinical medical librarian from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine rounds two days a week with each of two teams, providing an average of twenty-five to thirty information packets to the teams each month. Many packets include several subtopics relating to specific patient care questions and educational issues. An examination of eighteen months of coversheets from information packets given to internal medicine teams shows that specific patient care questions occur most frequently (41%); questions about common conditions are less frequent (10%). Nearly half of the time (43%) the CML adds an educational component: background material on a disease or therapy or hints about information strategies. A vignette illustrates the role of the information specialist within the healthcare environment, citing examples that illustrate the range of questions from an internal medicine teaching team: educational questions, diagnosis or therapy for rare or common diseases, unusual disease combinations, ethics, and pharmaceutical topics.

Key Words:

• Information services
• information science
• information dissemination
• information management
• library services