National Medical Librarians Month
New England Region Featured Projects 2011
Institution: Baystate Medical Center Health Sciences Library, Springfield MA
Audience response programs are increasingly popular among residents and other health professionals as a teaching tool and in enhancing formal presentations. The Health Sciences library at Baystate Medical Center created a suite of services for the integration of audience response systems with learning, assessment, and program evaluation.
Most residents use PowerPoint for their presentations and increasingly incorporate TurningPoint into their slide shows for greater audience interaction. The library helps residents convert slide presentations to an audience response format and incorporate the ResponseWare system. The system uses mobile devices instead of clickers. A new user instruction program was developed to incorporate polling technology in teaching and assessment. The Health Sciences Library also created a LibGuide in collaboration with the Office of Educational Research and Development that assists residency Program Directors in developing medical residents as teachers, learners and critical thinkers.
One unexpected result of adding ResponseWare to a technology repertoire is that health professionals associate the library with technology in general and audience response expertise in particular. In taking the lead to provide services for audience response system, the Health Sciences Library has added another function to our role as a partner in technology training and has increased the perception of health professionals that the library is an essential support service for teaching and learning.
Institution: Heywood Hospital Health Sciences Library, Gardner MA
In Gardner Massachusetts, Heywood Hospital's Health Sciences Library and Social Services Department collaborated with the Greater Gardner Religious Council on a community outreach education project to provide education to various faith-based communities in the greater Gardner area. A pre-project survey revealed a lack of awareness of reliable community and web-based resources, and of how to evaluate them.
Specific goals were to create awareness of Heywood Hospital Health Sciences Library as a community resource for their health information needs; teach how to evaluate health information websites; and introduce several quality websites such as MedlinePlus. Through partnerships with a total of 8 different community agencies and 4 internal departments, a program entitled Finding Reliable Answers to Your Health-Related Questions was presented at 14 venues and provided education to 118 consumers.
In addition to providing education to community members, the project enhanced in-house relationships, developed community partnerships, and contributed to our organization's overall mission.
Institution: Yale University Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, New Haven CT
Healthflicks (http://www.youtube.com/healthflicks) is a YouTubeTM online video channel, an output of a subcontract project to build health literacy among teenage urban audiences that receive the majority of their entertainment though online videos. Healthflicks used students to develop and produce web vignettes on teen health topics, featuring scenarios and scripts created by teens with librarian and Yale graduate student oversight. The project established a cohort of authentic and self-motivated teen writers, actors, and production crew at urban New Haven locations.
Student participants also learned about health literacy concepts such as evaluating health-related web sites for accuracy and potential bias. An after-school club, the Health Occupations Student Association (HOSA) ( http://www.hosa.org/ ) also embraced the project and provided student actors and script writers. Partners for the project included the Cushing Whitney Medical Library (http://library.medicine.yale.edu/) as a community resource for accurate health information and video production, Hill Regional Career High School (http://www.nhps.net/Hillregional) as a source of student participants and actors and production site, and the Office of New Haven and State Affairs at Yale (http://www.yale.edu/onhsa/) to provide access to Yale and New Haven-based filming locations and advice.
The YouTubeTM channel features 11 health topic videos. Another potential outcome is the project model itself, which other groups may use to develop additional health content created by teens. Additional outcomes include the use of the products nationwide by school health instructors seeking class discussion triggers, and parents that seek strategies for advising their children about health risks and prevention strategies.
Back to National Medical Librarians Month 2011 page
