Library-sponsored instruction improves core informatics competencies among allied health students: a research-based case study.

Since 1999, a librarian-administered course entitled Computer Literacy for Healthcare Professionals has been required of all incoming occupational, physical, and respiratory therapy students at Stony Brook University. Outcome data from pretests/posttests and student self-assessments over a 3-year period from 2000 to 2002 demonstrate the effectiveness of the training program and of library-sponsored instruction. This study evaluated whether curriculum-integrated informatics training by librarians is effective in enabling allied health students to acquire and retain literature-searching skills. Pretests and posttests measured the impact of instructional intervention upon student acquisition of literature-searching skills; a second posttest ("post5-test") measured skill retention. The intervention group consisted of 179 subjects enrolled in baccalaureate occupational, physical, and respiratory therapy programs between 2000 and 2002; the control group consisted of 48 physician assistant students who had no formal instruction in literature searching. Student self-assessments provided qualitative outcome measures. Paired t test analysis showed that the mean posttest score for the intervention group was considerably greater at the p HEALTH CARE INFORMATICS connotes various meanings. Its present use refers to patient-centered clinical information and knowledge management and includes information literacy and lifelong learning skills critical to contemporary health care. Health care professionals must contend with a burgeoning growth of biomedical knowledge and steady advance of information technology developments. The celebrated "paradigm shift" in clinical education that has heralded computer-aided instruction, problem-based learning, and evidence-based practice demands that health care professionals exercise increasingly sophisticated information management skills. Indeed, the professional organizations that represent occupational, physical, and respiratory therapists variously require inclusion of informatics training in the curricula of accredited educational programs.1-3 The importance of informatics training for health care professionals is well documented in the professional literature.4-13 However, providing informatics instruction can be a challenge for many allied health science programs. Few programs have the capital resources for the infrastructure needed to support informatics training. Hiring new faculty is often not possible. Meanwhile, existing faculty who may have the expertise to conduct such training are often already committed to clinical training. Furthermore, curriculum review committees may resist apportioning time in overstretched clinical training schedules to allow for untried informatics education. Such compound challenges frame a door of opportunity for clinical and academic faculty to enter into partnerships with their affiliated health science librarians, whose skills and training are well suited to informatics instruction. Background Stony Brook University (SBU), a Carnegie I research institution and Association of American Universities member, is one of the four university centers within the State University of New York (SUNY) system. The Health Sciences Center (HSC) Library serves the academic and research missions of the five HSC schools: dental medicine, medicine, nursing, health technology and management (allied health), and social welfare. The library also supports the clinical mission of the University Hospital & Medical Center, a 504-bed facility and the only Level 1 trauma and tertiary care center in Suffolk County. …