What's New From MLA

Sarah Sutton

Clinical Librarian

University Hospitals Leicester

What I am going to talk about

• A brief explanation of MLA

• Information from presentations I attended that would be useful to librarians working in outreach, CL, informationist or embedded librarian roles

• How to get the best from MLA – part 1

What is MLA

• Its not a conference, it’s the Annual Meeting of the US Medical Library Association.

• Anyone can join the MLA and there are quite a few international members

• International members get a discounted rate and MLA membership in turn gives you a discount on attending the MLA Annual Meeting and the discount pays for the international membership!

MLA Presidential Address• Ruth Holst, quoted one of Google’s

missions “Focus on the customer and all else will follow”.

• Likened MLs to Google, create tools to solve problems

• Organize information to make it easy to use

• Provide things so they look free and people don’t know we provided them

• MLs need to raise their profiles so they can retain roles and develop new ones

• Disaster Information Specialist new area, MLA and NLM developing study materials so MLs can train to become DIS

• MLA also sponsoring research into the Value of Librarians, showing the impact MLs have on patient care – not finished yet.

Crowdsourcing Your DiagnosisSharon Leslie

• Peer to peer healthcare discussion sites

• Hundreds of people get together to discuss their illnesses and compare their progress

• www.curetogether.com

• www.patientslikeme.com

• Patients register their conditions, and drugs used, symptoms etc and give feedback on them and comments

• You have to register to see them

• US Drug companies buying patient feedback on their drugs from Patients Like Me, and using the two sites to recruit patients for drug trials

• From Expert Patients to Citizen Scientists

• Librarians role?

• Tell clinicians/patients about the P2P sites

• Use them as part of our lit searches?

Integrating embedded clinical informationists into the users workflows: real-time interactive asking and answering clinical

questions. Amy Allison et al.

• Clinician requested librarian to participate in morning report

• Library keen to move out of building

• Librarian renamed as Clinical Informationist, given a laptop

• Clinicians wanted a summary of the answer to a clinical ? as speedily as possible

• CI would produce a summary and then cross check it with the senior clinician to find best evidence and circulate the results

• CI gained in confidence and developed more skills at selecting best evidence

• Blog used to share the evidence http://emorymedicine.wordpress.com/

• Tags encourage browsing

• Chief Residents set monthly quiz based on blog with prizes

• To be a CI at Emory you have to have hospital library experience and undertake training in EBM

Embedded Clinical Medical Librarianship: Assisting patient care on the front line.

Julia Esparza • NEJM, JAMA, medscape and

guidelines• Reads computer and paper

patient notes• Some ?s about this from staff• Dress for comfort and culture –

white coat, avoid aftershave/perfume

• Have a strong physical and mental stomach – have a good breakfast first

• Charged batteries for your IT

• Speed over thorough – UpToDate or a textbook over Pubmed

• Offer to answer ?s don’t wait to be asked

• Don’t make suggestions but if asked question do answer

• Speak up if you think something missed – discussion point?

• Ask Clinician to write down question – handy for strong accents and spelling confusion

• Stay before and after round to speak to staff and may pick up ?s to embarrassed to ask in front of senior staff

What's new at the NLM• Free access to medical lit in times

of emergency. NLM organises free bundles of info during emergencies, txtbooks actually most popular, publishers put in books on radiation for the tsunami in Japan.

• NLM linking patient information to Electronic Health Records – these really taking off in the US.

• They must be in place for 2016, penalties if not used meaningfully – so Medline Plus Connect good way to demonstrate meaningful use

• MedlinePlus actually very good detailed info for patients of use to CLs

• PubMed Health• http://

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/

• NLM want more members of the public to access SRs and look at comparative effectiveness – using info and SRs from all over the world including Cochrane

• Still in development

How to get the best from MLA – part 1

• This is part 1 because it was my first MLA – so I don’t have know all the “wrinkles” yet

• Get a mentor• Attend the free events – good

info, food and networking• Build in some jet lag / sight

seeing time• Share a room• If over 55 check for discounts• Think bursaries

MLA, ICML and ICLC 2013

Thank You and Questions?