Robin; Dr. Gordon Guyatt, the leading expert for the workshop; and Melissa

Robin and Melissa, two librarians at the W. K. Kellogg Health Sciences Library, recently returned from Hamilton where they spent five days assisting clinicians to incorporate evidence-based clinical practice into their work. Clinicians such as doctors, chiropractors, osteopaths, surgeons, and naturopaths take part in the workshops.

Evidence-based practice is an approach to clinical practice that teaches clinicians to incorporate not only their expertise, but also the best available research and the patient’s values when making medical decisions. It pushes against the traditional type of clinical education that is mainly expert-based.

McMaster University is considered the birthplace of evidence-based practice, and they have been hosting workshops aimed at training clinicians in this practice since the early 1990s. Librarians became a key part of the tutor team in 2001, brought in to assist with showing clinicians how to tap into the best available research, and how to determine what is the best available research, as efficiently as possible.

Over 130 participants and tutors come from all over the world, so sending two librarian representatives from Halifax is something the Dalhousie Libraries are proud of. This is Robin’s second year taking part in the event, and Melissa’s third. “It’s a great week for us, I always come home with some new teaching ideas that I bring to my work with the College of Pharmacy at Dalhousie,” says Melissa.

“One of the benefits of participating is that it reinforces to us the needs of the clinicians that we work with at Dalhousie and how we can make their lives easier,” says Robin, who teaches evidence-based sessions for residents at Dal. “I design courses for the residents here with faculty in emergency medicine and family medicine. Having had the experience at the workshop allows me to better communicate with and to better deliver evidence-based practice sessions for our own residents.”

These workshops also have wide-reaching benefits for the clinicians that attend. Many of the clinicians play a lead role in training other clinicians in evidence-based practice when they return to their own institutions.

“These workshops also afford us the opportunity to get to know people from around the world in the health care community and make contacts that we can stay connected with throughout our career,” says Melissa.

“The opportunity to network with clinicians and health science librarian colleagues is very valuable to us. I love learning about what’s going on in other institutions,” says Robin.

For more information about evidence-based clinical practice, visit ebm.mcmaster.ca