by Clinical Knowledge Specialists, Lucy Wells and Julian Robinson
Lucy:
“In November 2023, I was invited to deliver a presentation at the International Clinical Librarian Conference about my work with the General Surgery Department.
As the Clinical Knowledge Specialist for Surgery, I regularly carry out evidence searches for my teams to enable them to make informed decisions based on the available literature. I regularly attend General Surgery’s Mortality and Morbidity meetings, picking up evidence searches in relation to patient care cases. I started to present the results of these searches to the team during their bi-monthly Clinical Governance meetings. This project enables the whole team to receive the results of the evidence search at the same time, allowing them to make decisions as a team and giving me an active role in the meetings.
At the conference, I delivered a ten minute lightning talk about how I set this project up, covering how many presentations had been delivered in just over a year, and how I had managed to rerun a version of this project in another team.
The presentation was very well received! I had a lot of questions from the other participants and was asked to deliver talks to other library services so that they could replicate this. I think one of the attractions of the project is its practicality and how easy it is to replicate.
I was also able to sit on a panel to discuss my experience of delivering a systematic review service.
And this was the first time in many years that I was able to meet up with library colleagues in person and it was wonderful to see old friends!”
Julian:
“I joined Lucy in attending the conference in Leicester and it was my first time at a Clinical Librarian conference, and first health related library conference. I enjoyed the three days enormously. Many of the presentations and discussions were relatable to my day-to-day work and I came away with some wisdom and practical advice on, for example, supporting systematic reviews. This was very timely and has helped in my confidence and readiness to offer support.
AI also had a few mentions, with a takeaway I’d not come across before – the concept of AI ‘hallucinations’, essentially AI making things up! It was good to hear the advocacy for librarians being ideally placed to help users develop the digital literacy skills to critically evaluate when using AI.
The conference was very friendly and fairly small scale, and I was made to feel very welcome when seated among new people or when milling around between sessions. It was great to take a few days out of the normal work routine and stand back and learn what else was going on in the sector. It was reassuring to hear from others in similar roles facing the same challenges and conundrums, and interesting to hear how others approached database searching, say, and which field codes were preferred.
Finally, I should give a special mention to Lucy, whose presentation sparked the most discussion of all the presentations, with many keen to replicate a version of what she’d established.”