Enhancing resident scholarship with a library partnership.

Abstract

Introduction: The ACGME requires that residents understand and participate in scholarly activities in order to meet graduation requirements. Although library support had historically been available to residents, there was no evidence that this resource was utilized in the past. The Family Medicine residency utilizes the library partnership in order to educate residents about the most effective methods to search for relevant literature and provide residents with an overview of pertinent library resources, including how to access full-text articles. A couple of years ago, the presenters developed a curriculum to provide residents with education on library resources, so that residents could effectively complete their scholarly activities by utilizing evidence-based literature.

Study Objective: The study objective was to gather data from residents who have received education on IUSM library resources in order to describe what residents learned and what they identify are future educational needs.

Methods: During 2 academic years, 23 second-year residents attended a one-hour library instruction session while on their scholarship rotation. Thirteen residents attended a session during October – February of the first academic year, and 10 residents attended a session during August – November of the second academic year. The goals for the session were that residents would: learn the basics of searching for literature on a topic, become familiar with library resources, and begin searching for literature related to their individual scholarly projects. This cross-sectional study used an 8-question survey given to all second and third-year residents at the end of the second year that the library instruction sessions were implemented.

Results: Thirteen of the 23 residents responded to the survey (57%). Five of the respondents (38%) were second-year residents, and 8 of the respondents (62%) were third-year residents. All 13 residents responded that they learned about library resources during the session, and 11 residents said they learned the basics of searching for literature on a topic. Eight residents responded that they learned how to get access to full-text articles. Seven residents also responded that having a second session after the project is further along would be useful to them, and 6 residents responded that citation information would be useful for the librarians to cover.

Conclusions: Results of the cross-sectional survey indicated that the goal of increasing residents' knowledge about library resources was met. As a result of the library instruction, residents used what they learned when searching for articles and when accessing the full-text of articles. Feedback from the survey suggested that an additional session and more instruction on citation information would be helpful. Future scholarship sessions will be modified to include an introduction to citation management software, and an additional session will be scheduled during the third core to focus more in-depth on citation management software, keyword searching, and any other questions residents may have. Pre-& post-tests to evaluate residents' change in confidence when literature searching and managing citations during their scholarly project will be implemented.