Laying a foundation for clinical librarianship in India

Sriganesh, V. (2005) Laying a foundation for clinical librarianship in India. In: MLAI 2005, 07-09 Nov 2005, Bangalore, India.

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Abstract

A clinical librarian takes the library and the librarian’s skills to the point of care, and provides clinicians with evidence that helps them offer the best care to patients. The role of the clinical librarian includes answering the immediate needs of clinicians for patient care, provide literature searches and articles to support the evidence, support the development of new guidelines based on all activities carried out under this role and proactively create resources for evidence based care. The history of clinical librarianship in the developed countries is a couple of decades old. Clinical librarianship would be a boon to India. Doctors in India are forever hard pressed for time – and in fact they see far more patients than their colleagues in the developed nations. The presence of high quality Clinical Librarians could make a world of difference to the care they provide patients. In addition, if the development of this profession is considered very seriously, it would be a great alternative career opportunity for the thousands of aspiring students who do not get admission to medical colleges, giving them the satisfaction of being in the medical field. And if guidelines and treatment outcomes based on these activities are documented and made available on the web, the resource would be invaluable for doctors across the country. This paper suggests an outline of steps involved for creating and offering a Clinical Librarianship programme in India.

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