Remote Users of Health Sciences Libraries - Abstract

Library Trends, Summer, 1998 by Phyllis C. Self, Barbara A. Wright, Jessica L. Waugh

ABSTRACT

Providing information services to remote users is not a new concept for health sciences librarians. Most health care professionals practice in hospitals and clinics remote from a health sciences library. However, trends in today's health care management systems, education initiatives, and the rise in consumerism challenge health sciences librarians to evaluate and extend their services more than ever before using new technologies. This article explores the variety of innovations in service models implemented over the last twenty-five years that health sciences librarians have initiated to extend library services and information beyond the walls of the library.

INTRODUCTION

Gone are the days when a health sciences library was the sacrosanct property of the physician. Describing the increasing use of health sciences libraries by allied health professionals and the lay public, Estelle Brodman (1974) predicted that libraries would need to keep pace with the demands of these consumers, in addition to those of their traditional client, the physician.

Since Brodman's article, the literature is increasingly concerned with the new definition of the health sciences library user and, of late, much of the attention focuses on the latest breed of health sciences library user--i.e., the remote user or the person (provider or lay person) who seeks medical information off-site via computer. The expectations of this new breed of user and the accommodations (both traditional and innovative) being made to meet those needs by health sciences libraries as described in the literature will be the focus of this article, in addition to several challenges facing health sciences libraries in their attempts to meet these needs in the digital age.

WHO ARE THESE "REMOTE USERS," OF HEALTH SCIENCES INFORMATION?

The people who constitute this class of health sciences library clients include the traditional academic health care provider, such as the physician faculty member; the non-academic health care provider, such as the community physician or allied health practitioner; and the nonhealth care consumer.

The "Generalist Initiative," in a counter-reaction to medicine's trend toward the reductionist thought dominating medical education, encourages the selection of primary care medicine as opposed to specialty medicine. According to Pruessner, Hensel, and Rasco (1992) generalist medicine would be ideal for the physician willing to accept "all persons and all problems," the doctor with a "taste for complexity, for jagged edges and sudden leaps" (pp. 232, 235). The Generalist Initiative leads to the dispersal of physicians and physicians-in-training to rural areas remote from health sciences libraries in academic health science centers. Because physicians-in-training need someone to oversee training, the initiative also gives rise to a new role for the already practicing rural doctor--i.e., "affiliated preceptor" or the off-campus professional who oversees the experiential educations of health professional students intending to practice in similar rural circumstances. These rural generalists, as well as their students, are in need of ready access to a broad range of medical literature; yet, they are frequently hundreds of miles from the nearest health sciences library.

In today's digital age, the Health Sciences Library must take its cue from the Generalist Initiative for Physicians when identifying its clientele and designing appropriate information access programs. Health science library users can no longer be "reduced" to field physician or academic physician--emerging nonphysician groups in need of information have narrowed the gap with physicians in terms of their medical information needs. Efforts to provide medical information to the non-academically based provider are increasing in numbers; studies such as Ellen Hall's (1995) indicate that nonphysician providers, such as physical therapists, have an increased need for medical information as they branch out from hospital-based practices to private practices. Community health workers, such as public health nurses, need access to information while in the field; outreach efforts on the part of health sciences libraries now attempt to capture this newer group of clients (Self, Sayed, & Henry, 1997). To satisfy the demands of today's workforce, many allied health degree programs are now being offered as "distance learning" formats (for example, Virginia Commonwealth University, in the summer of 1998, initiated a doctoral program in health related sciences, based on the university's successful executive master's program in health administration which takes place solely online). Programs like these take into account that the "full time" nonworking graduate student is becoming an anachronism; the population profile trend in higher education is the mature professional who desires higher education but not at the expense of sacrificing employment status. Students of such programs will have information needs transcending the traditional trip to the health sciences library, because most of them will be either physically remote from such structures or consider themselves too enmeshed in daily work needs or family life that taking the time to actually visit the library would be inconvenient or even prohibitive.