The Clinical Informationist: Does the Model Work

Background To evaluate the role of the Clinical Informatics Consult Service(CICS), an informationist service at the Eskind Biomedical Library (EBL) at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC, in clinical decision-making, the EBL has been awarded a 3-year grant from the National Library of Medicine (5 R01 LM07849-02). The CICS is a well-established program that facilitates evidence-based practice by delivering targeted information in answer to complex, patient-specific questions. The CICS places librarians with specialized training in medical subject areas and in information retrieval ("clinical informationists") on clinical teams in intensive care settings. Acting as expert consultants, they analyze the biomedical literature to identify, filter, and present the best examples of each clinical viewpoint expressed about key problems.

Evaluation Project Working in cooperation with the Center for Evaluation and Program Improvement (CEPI) at Peabody College of Vanderbilt, the investigators will evaluate formally the role of CICS in clinical decision-making and evidence-seeking behavior. While past studies have evaluated clinical medical librarians' roles, few if any studies have examined the effectiveness and utility of the new clinical informationist approach in sites where informationists are well-established.

The project will also create reusable evaluation tools transferable across environments. Through a combination of observation and interviews, investigators will examine librarian involvement in three existing Vanderbilt CICS intensive care units. The project will collect detailed information about the ways in which clinicians incorporate CICS-provided information into their workflows. Next, investigators will conduct a randomized trial to evaluate the effect of CICS on decision-making. Investigators will compare clinicians' intended course of care vs. actual care when CICS results are provided and when clinicians seek information themselves.

Finally, "virtual cases" developed from actual patient CICS-related scenarios in each clinical unit will be incorporated into training tools that can be used to export elements of the CICS model to other locations. Demonstration of the utility of the clinical informationist approach can foster widespread adoption nationally, and increase the degree to which clinical practice becomes evidence-based.

Inclusion criteria

Evidence-based questions requested by clinician on current service as an attending, resident, fellow, or nurse practitioner on one of the units included in the study

Exclusion criteria

All others