September 13, 2016

SC/MLA Annual Meeting: Sneak Peek of the Paper Presentation, "Re-Thinking Resident Orientations"

This week, we are offering you a glimpse of the paper, "Re-Thinking Resident Orientations: Changes over Time in Resident Information Seeking Behaviors and Confidence in Critical Appraisal Skills" by Cynthia J. Beeler, R. Eric Heidel, and Martha F. Earl, from the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine. 

Back in 2006, in collaboration with the Core Curriculum Committee, librarians at Preston Medical Library added three questions to every exiting resident survey, and began to survey incoming residents.  The idea was that we would be able to see changes in how residents approach information resources, how many articles they read per week, and how confident they are with journal article appraisal.  For this project, we looked at the data for incoming and exiting residents from 2006-2016.  Even though the data is not specific to the person (as in, we don’t have identifiers to know the change in specific residents), we can see that there are trends, and some of those trends lead to more questions.  Exiting residents report reading more articles than incoming residents.  Is that because their attendings encourage them to read more?  Is it because they aren’t learning what they need to know during hours that they are on duty?  Or is it because with smartphones and social media it’s easier than ever to just click and read articles? 


We were overjoyed to see that exiting residents were four times more likely to consult a librarian with information needs than incoming residents.  We like to think that this is a direct reflection of being integrated into the curriculum of some programs and having orientation sessions with all programs.  Even with this going well, is there more we can do to help our residents become lifelong library users?

We are looking forward to telling you more about our research on Tuesday, October 4 between 11:30a-12:30p! 

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