Librarians Attend Morning Report
As of March 2006, HSLS librarians are participants in Morning Report on the General Internal Medicine Service in UPMC Montefiore. The daily Morning Report session, which includes the attending physician, chief resident, and eight medical residents, is an important educational component of internal medicine resident training programs. Librarians are participating in a study for which the goal is to prepare residents to use evidence-based information in support of patient care. Following the discussion of a case, a clinical question is developed. Both the residents and the librarian retrieve relevant information to answer the clinical question, and this information forms a discussion at Report two days later. The presence of a librarian in this process serves as a reminder that quality primary literature is readily available.
This isn’t the first time that HSLS librarians have participated in Morning Report. Beginning in 1988, a “clinical librarian” from Falk Library attended Report daily, and responded to the information needs identified by providing relevant journal articles to the chief resident that same day. A study conducted in 1991 by the participating librarians compared the article selections made by the librarian with that of a physician.1 The study results found that librarians can recognize and select clinically useful articles as effectively as physicians. The growing availability of electronic information resources since the late 1990s resulted in a dramatic rise in end-user searching. By the early 2000s, chief residents felt they could satisfy their own information needs, and the clinical librarian no longer attended Morning Report.
The resumption of librarian participation in Morning Report is a win-win situation. The inclusion of relevant literature in the clinical discussion provides residents with a more scholarly, evidence-based approach to patient care. The librarians, in turn, are exposed to clinical discussions resulting in increased knowledge of health and disease. Participation also provides librarians with an opportunity to build relationships with the physicians and residents.
1Kuller AB, Wessel CB, Ginn DS, Martin TP. Quality filtering of the clinical literature by librarians and physicians. Bull Med Libr Assoc. 1993 Jan;81(1):38-43.
--Nancy Tannery
