Induction and old introduction
(This is my old introduction on the ABOUT ME page first written in Feb. 2014)
My name is Nora Camann and I'm an assistant librarian in a hospital. That's right. Libraries have hospitals--or rather, hospitals have libraries. I mean, of course they do. How else would a doctor be able to get her book STAT?!
No, really. When I first came to the UK, I had no idea health libraries were a thing. I'm originally from the US, a native of Athens, GA. Back home, I had been a school librarian and knew how to teach literacy skills to children through story-telling and rhyme games. Now I work at Queen Elizabeth Hospital and I can't even pronounce many of the things my readers are interested in.
So what does a librarian in a hospital actually do, you might ask. Well, according to Health Education England (HEE), as a health care librarian, I:
"...enable all health care staff to have relevant skills and knowledge to make evidence based decisions leading to excellent and safe care."
This sounds easy enough, right?
What this really boils down to is the usual lending of materials to readers, providing books and articles through inter-library loans, and maintenance of the collection. This is coupled with providing education and training to medical staff and students so that they can find as well as correctly appraise research papers.
With a background in education, I'm most excited about the training aspect.
I will be using this website for the year of 2014 to track and show off my progress and mistakes as I learn on the job. Because this is all so new to me, I am treating my experience as that of a graduate trainee while I work to get my library certification in CILIP. Anyone else who is interested in healthcare libraries or graduate trainee-ships, please feel free to contact me with questions or comments.
INDUCTION
If you work for an NHS Hospital, you must go through induction. This involves making sure you know how not to spread illness or damage your back when lifting patients. I will hopefully never have to lift anyone of worry about pricking myself on a used needle, but still, it's good to know these things.
I also had my local induction. I have been learning how to use the LMS, Sirsi. Here is a list of what I have learned to do on the system so far.
inter library loans
check out
check in
holds
checking in serials
paying bills
checking finished records for overdues, etc.
creating new members
modifying member records
modifying due dates
modifying serial records
My main focus has been on inter library loans and finding articles that readers have requested. I'm pretty fast at that and have already had some readers come in and ask for my help specifically. I'm pretty proud of that.
Recently, I sat down with one of my colleagues and she taught me a bit about doing research in health care databases. Although I will not be the main person doing this, if she is not around I may need to do a "quick and dirty" search for a reader. We looked at Ovid specifically, but I'm pretty sure I could figure out Medline and others. I play around with them at home doing my own "research" just for fun.
* P.s. I just wanted to add that working for the QEH Helath Library has been really awesome. Everyone is so nice and I had an excellent Christmas lunch with the Lewisham branch. My work is interesting and challenging and I'm so grateful to be here!
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