NHS Education for Scotland Expert Search Skills and Development of Knowledge Services for NHS Scotland Presentation for ADEPT course October 2003

Aim “A state of the art national knowledge service for NHS Scotland, which will empower and support the NHS workforce in the delivery of high standards of care throughout the patient journey.”

Vision for Knowledge Service Development Exploitation of technology to deliver knowledge to point of need Facilitated by the skills of information practitioners and managers linking the technology to user need.

Changing Role of the NHS Librarian Knowledge Navigator Educator Manager Expert Searcher

Role of the Expert Searcher Information Need in Context Healthcare as an Information-Rich, Problem-Solving Environment Urgency Level of detail Authority Level of certainty Expertise Resources Standards

Why do we need expert searchers? Physicians have an unmet information need for 2 of every 3 patients seen (Gorman, 1995) Partnership for Care Clinical governance Risk management John Hopkins University Hospital Inquiry Bristol Inquiry

Increasing complexity of knowledge base Indexing Information overload Time Expertise

Are librarians the most expert searchers? Haynes et al (1990) Compared recall and precision for: –Novice clinical searchers –Experience clinical searchers –Medical librarians More evidence needed

Expert Search Roles – new and emerging Informationist Clinical Librarian Information Consultant Systematic Reviewer Ask-a-Librarian / Online Enquiry Services

Areas of Responsibility Defining the question Information retrieval –Selecting sources –Balancing sensitivity and specificity Appraising the quality of information Extracting and presenting essential and relevant information Facilitating transfer into practice

Effectiveness of Expert Searching? Haynes et al 1990 Lindberg 1993 Winning and Beverley 2003 More evidence needed

Looking to the future Specialisation Referral systems Integration - of Information Specialist role into Practice Settings

NHS Education for Scotland Expert Search Skills and Development of NHS Scotland Knowledge Services Presentation for ADEPT course October 2003