Objective:
To present ISMETT’s experience in promoting electronic library resources in an area that has so far lacked extensive technological resources in such field.
Context:
ISMETT – Istituto Mediterraneo per i Trapianti e Terapie ad Alta Specializzazione – is a joint venture between two Sicilian hospitals and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Its mission is to provide outstanding patient care and to contribute to tomorrow’s Italian Health System innovation through clinical and management innovation, education and training.
Consistently with its institutional mission of transferring clinical know-how in the fields of transplantation and specialized therapies, our facility is committed to “transplant” the American model of the Health Sciences Library used in Pittsburgh. The first step has been creating a bridge between Palermo and the Health Sciences Library System for the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Health System – which is one of the top-ranking libraries in the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL). (www.hsls.pitt.edu).
What we did:
We provided all health care professionals with an account at HSLS that offers them electronic resources of exceptional biomedical relevance, such as:
Electronic Journals – more than 2,000
Electronic Books – more than 300
OVID
Up-To-Date
Micromedex
MDConult
ISI Web of Knowledge
PubMed with full-text articles links
We also offered a document delivery service for the document not available on-line.
What we observed:
· An increase in Document Delivery requests.
· Users kept requesting documents available to them free of charge from the E-Library from the Document Delivery Service.
· Analogously, users subscribed to journals available to them free of charge from the E-Library out of their Continuing Medical Education allowance.
· Incorrect assumptions from the users that E-resources malfunctioned when, in fact, this inability to retrieve information was due to user error and insufficient skills of the user.
Measures we took:
We set up an educational program to train our staff on how to use E-resources in the correct manner.
What we expect from this educational program:
To minimize administrative time spent in handling malfunctioning complaints
To reduce costs related to document delivery.
To decrease medication errors (by instructing staff on how to use Micromedex)
To promote critical thinking skills in clinical practice
To be able to deliver the most advanced health care service
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