What is the Clinical Librarian Service?
Our clinical librarian service is designed to bring the library into the clinical setting, by responding to information needs at the time and point of care. Clinical librarians can join the multidisciplinary team at ward rounds and in clinical meetings, working in partnership with health professionals to help them identify and make use of the best available research evidence.
We provide Clinical Librarian Services for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells (MTW) and Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT)
Our services promotes a questioning and learning culture in the organisations we serve, and provides a crucial mechanism for getting research evidence into practice.
Who is the service for?
For anyone (e.g. consultants, nurses, allied health professionals, psychologists, technical staff, managers etc) who needs to find evidence to support their work and organisational objectives.
Benefits of a Clinical Librarian Service
| Benefits to staff | Benefits to the Trust |
| Saving clinical time on decision-making. We call this the ‘gift of time’ | Meeting service improvement targets |
| Providing quality-assured information at the point of need | Ensuring clinical and corporate services are supported by research |
| Supporting evidence-based practice | Supporting Trust quality and productivity objectives |
| Promoting good patient care and continuous improvement | Promoting a questioning and learning culture |
What Services are included?
Our Clinical Librarians can offer a range of different services, tailored to meet your needs.
Pop-Up Library
If you can’t get to the Library, then we will bring the Library to you. Contact us to arrange for a Clinical Librarian to come and spend time with your department, team, or ward. Whilst there, they can help with searches, carry out training, discuss staff and patient information needs and how best to meet them, help arrange and facilitate journal clubs, assist with research/audit activity, academic study and nurse revalidation.
Evidence Searching
We can save you time by finding the relevant, up to date, high quality evidence that you need. Request an evidence search here.
Training
If you want to find out more about the Library and Knowledge resources available to you, and learn how to search for, and appraise them for yourself, then the Clinical Librarian can come at a time and location that is convenient for you and your team and carry out any training that you require. See our training page for a full list of our training sessions.
Journal Clubs and Reading Groups
Our Clinical Librarian can provide advice and support with setting up (e.g. administration, promotion, selecting and sourcing articles and relevant appraisal checklist) and facilitating journal clubs, as well as providing training on how to critically appraise evidence.
We also offer a reflective reading club for nurses and allied health professionals who want to improve their critical reflection skills and engage with reflective practice. The reflective reading club is an opportunity for critically discuss a chosen article, and reflect on its relevance to, and Impact on professional frameworks and clinical practice.
Attend Departmental Meetings/Assist with Projects
Our Clinical Librarians can attend your meetings to assess and help with any information requirements that arise. If you your team is working on a project (e.g. looking to introduce a new policy or change in practice, create an information campaign, or conduct service evaluation), we can help from the start by carrying out literature searches and finding the evidence you need to support your decisions.
Current Awareness
If you want to keep up with recent developments in your speciality or area of interest, then sign up to receive our Knowledge Alert Bulletins. They will keep you informed of new policies, guidelines, health news, research breakthroughs, events and much more. You can choose how often you receive the bulletins – daily/weekly/monthly. Sign up here
- If you are a MTW student or staff member and would like more information or to discuss how the Clinical Librarian Service can help you, please contact: Nikki Myall
- If you are a KMPT student or staff member and would like more information or to discuss how the Clinical Librarian Service can help you, please contact: Maria Hughes. KMPT staff and students can also find further information about library services specific to their organisation here: KMPT | Clinical librarian and here: KMPT | Information and resources