Integration of a Hospital Librarian on a Hospital Incident Command Team during COVID-19 Vaccine Planning and Implementation

ABSTRACT

In October 2020, a hospital librarian was positioned on a health system’s COVID-19 Vaccine Planning and Steering Committee team and the Hospital Incident Command Leadership team as situational awareness unit leader. The role involved monitoring, collecting, synthesizing and disseminating COVID-19 vaccine-related information to health system incident command leadership, logistics teams and clinical operations teams during the planning and implementation of COVID-19 vaccine operations. An assessment of the role measured: 1. Relevance of information provided 2. Overall satisfaction with information provided 3. Impact of information provided on decision-making 4. Impact of information provided on timesavings. Assessment results suggest that a hospital librarian in a situational awareness role can positively impact satisfaction, decision-making, timesavings and information relevancy within hospital incident command operations.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• hospital librarian
• incident command
• pandemic response
• situational awareness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).