Research capacity in health librarianship

The health care system currently calls for cost containment, accountability, and quality care, which all rely on the application and integration of the results of a reliable and sound research. Capacity building refers to a planned knowledge development, skills, and other organizational abilities through inducements, technology, acquisition and training (Brettle & Urquhart, 2012). Capacity building can also take place at a personal level. Therefore health librarianship calls for this advancement to enhance the level and quality of research in the healthcare system. This paper tries to raise awareness in the role played by health librarianship in clinical research and tries to lay emphasis on research capacity development in health librarians and its significance. The paper further discusses the challenges faced in clinical research and health librarianship as a whole.

 

Librarians play a fundamental role in supporting research, development, and training that ensures increased knowledge to boost the economic growth of nations in every sector. This role calls for attainment and acquisition of outstanding new insights and skills to cab the dynamic parts of libraries and librarians. Capacity building allows both health organizations and personnel to adopt skills useful in practical research and functionality at large. A growing literature base revolves around capacity development and librarianship (Brettle & Urquhart, 2012). Appropriate management abilities are mandatory for today’s labor force. Therefore relevant information, which is the key to management skills, is essential. Consequently, capacity building in librarians is necessary to enhance organizational development as well as knowledge building in research work.

According to Wood (2008), librarians’ capacity building alongside health professionals should be treated with the seriousness it deserves, more so in developing countries such as African nations. Libraries and librarians are responsible for the provision of the knowledge to organizations, which helps in making informed and sound decisions. Training of practicing health librarians alongside other information personnel should be a continuous practice to achieve capacity development, which in turn make it easy to support learning, research and teaching activities. This way, community development is quickly realized. Health sciences libraries entails an extensive variety of zones past therapeutic books including allied health, biomedical, nursing, and pharmacy. Advancement of research capacity in healthcare systems mainly takes place through training and education, raising clinical academic careers, research fellowships, and research posts. Health research always calls for proper co-ordination as well as more comprehensive and coherent funding strategies to realize capacity development in the field of health research.

In the UK, health department defines capacity building as the development of a cohort of highly skilled National Health Service researchers who will solve problems associated with health service (Rossall, Boyes, Montacute, & Doherty, 2008). Research utility can be realized primarily by the organizational collaboration to put in place an extensive network of proficiency and knowledge base. This union allows for the creation of improved quality of research outcome due to combined of organizational reputations and reinforced skills, which consequently improves capacity. For the purpose of this development, issues arising from health research have been of concern in the recent years. Training, education, and increasing clinical research personnel are initial actions that have put the health department a step closer to research capacity development in health librarians. Research capacity in other health-related fields such as nursing and medicine go hand in hand with capacity development in health librarians since they have a common goal, not forgetting the fact that they need to unite to achieve the common goal of better health care delivery. More comprehensive and coherent strategies to allow for proper funding and prioritization of this form of development has to be put in place to enhance research capacity in this disciplines. Initiatives have been implemented to improve the infrastructure for medical and clinical research (Rossall, Boyes, Montacute, & Doherty, 2008). The strategies, therefore are enough to testify how pertinent health librarianship is to health research and capacity building in this field, therefore, is mandatory.

The needs relating to health information called for the evolution of health librarianship in the 1970s. This development was an attempt to improve the level of the solution that was provided by the old hospital libraries (Wood, 2008). The role of a clinical or health librarian heavily relies on supporting evidence-based medicine. Evidence appraisal and location provide a solution to medical personnel by responding to emerging issues and patient-generated questions. Health librarians provide a tangible solution to information overload on health related issues and enhance the achievement of evidence-based practice (Wood, 2008). Health Libraries are therefore regarded to be imperative in ensuring effectiveness in clinical practice. Health Librarianship, therefore, presents a platform to ensure accuracy and reliability of evidence-based practice.

Evidence-based practice (EBP) and clinical governance have continuously mounted pressure on governments to lay down policies that provide research funding in the field of medicine (Rossall, Boyes, Montacute, & Doherty, 2008). Subsequently, there has been a notable increase in research activities globally in this field (Brettle & Urquhart, 2012).  Health librarianship, therefore, forms the basis of clinical studies, which ensures the development of EBP. Achievement of a high-end patient care calls for the integration and application of the outcomes of a reliable and sound research. In the Uk for instance, evidence from government documents reveals that there has been increased prioritization by the government on the need to enhance and advance proper leadership in clinical or health related research to boost the quality of health care delivery (Rossall, Boyes, Montacute, & Doherty, 2008). The department of health came up with guidelines on how to develop research capacity by advancing development and research activities, which include collaborative models among other propositions. These guidelines provide a substantial evidence of how significant research capacity building is to the success and the future of health care delivery. The fundamental connection of Librarians with research explicitly makes them a primary tool to realize this evolution. Propositions that the study should be used to measure the ramifications of the application of available evidence in the decision-making of healthcare system have been since emphasized. Health Librarians are urged to routinely and more efficiently pursue this goal of availing evidence through research practices and thereby collaborate with other researchers.

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) relies heavily on research. EBM is the application of evidence gathered from research in health practice (Rossall, Boyes, Montacute, & Doherty, 2008). However, the process of these studies makes it difficult for application in real clinical situations. A significant portion of health care personnel lacks the skills and expertise to carry out a sound and viable research and at times make correct interpretations of the available research evidence for a convenient clinical application (Brettle & Urquhart, 2012). It is, however, clear that evidence from such studies leads to improved healthcare provision. Better evidence, as well as increased expertise, are the key to realizing this improvement in the quality of healthcare (Wood, 2008). Health librarianship is there a core pillar in clinical research advancement. Problems relating to practice gap calls for the necessity to advance the quality of research as well as the expertise it encompasses, leading to increased concern in the recent years to develop research capacity. This development ensures the improvement of skills and research performance ability at the institutional and individual level. In this way, practical organizational utility development leads to high quality, credible and meaningful research (Short, McDonald, Turner, & Martis, 2010). 

The connection amongst research and proof based prescription is well established; EBM is the utilization of evidence from research in health practice, in spite of the fact that there are very much reported challenges connected with this. Research is regularly directed in settings, which do make it effectively pertinent in the healthcare framework and utilizing strategies, which are not methodologically sufficiently stable to be applicable in actual scenarios. Furthermore, many health experts lack the right skills to evaluate research proof keeping in mind the motive to come up with viable decisions about its application, and considerably more experts lack the necessary abilities to do research (Wood, 2008). It is clear that a group of thorough and clinically legitimate research will prompt better nature of therapeutic services provision (Rossall, Boyes, Montacute, & Doherty, 2008). Health librarianship involves research knowledge management. When one talks of a library, one of the roles that ring in mind is research. Health librarians, therefore, engages with research mainly in the context of EBP. Engagement ensures a more and reliable evidence that continuously proves to be useful in healthcare delivery (Rossall, Boyes, Montacute, & Doherty, 2008). Health Library, therefore, forms an important part of EBP.

Collaborative practices in research yield a greater generalizability and validity in comparison to a single profession research. Organizations and individuals utilize teamwork in conducting research with enhanced validity, quality, and applicability (Short, McDonald, Turner, & Martis, 2010). Healthcare delivery improves primarily through research carried by various professions. Health professionals and health librarians, therefore, need to work together to ensure capacity development in research. Collaborative practice prototypes ensure efficiency in clinical research, giving incredibly positive outcomes in patient care. Professionally diverse research results in a broader scope and healthcare relevance based on the productive research result. Intra-disciplinary research attitude is in this context discouraged as an impediment in the future of clinical research. Sound research is hard to achieve in isolation. Results that are more valid originates from multi-disciplinary research teams that can be easily applied and integrated into the EBM. This collaboration ensures research capacity growth. A study in the UK shows that collaborative networks ensure improved health care delivery. Therefore the government has shown increasing concern on collaborative networks to enhance research capacity advancement (Rossall, Boyes, Montacute, & Doherty, 2008). The clinical librarian is associated mainly with the support of EBM practice. They attend to question raised by patients by providing support to clinical teams through evidence appraisal. A clinical librarian engages with research on behalf of other health experts to realize EBM practice. 

Research funding is one of the initial drives to push forward the quality of research by availing adequate resources to the healthcare libraries by the responsible institutions. Research funding bodies, therefore, have the powers to prioritize research in the health sector. Studies show that most governments do not provide enough resources for research development (Rossall, Boyes, Montacute, & Doherty, 2008). Recommendations from independent institutions that are responsible for providing guidelines on clinical practice and clinical excellence based on evidence-based research likewise have the powers to influence health research prioritization. Several reports in this field of research development recommend collaborations from academic and health institutions to enhance the quality of research (Woods, 2008). Health research prioritization should take place on account of patient care alongside the public and patient’s needs. 

Research capacity development in health librarianship faces several challenges and objections. Library and Information Services (LIS) community does not consider itself as a profession that is research –oriented. Studies show that research capacity building in LIS community is alarming. LIS attitude of not being engaged with research present the biggest problem (Short, McDonald, Turner, & Martis, 2010). Studies further reveal that LIS community does not stay updated with LIS research activities (Short, McDonald, Turner, & Martis, 2010). Inappropriate research skills by the librarians is also a major issue. Information studies in undergraduate studies seem not to incorporate appropriate research skills in undergraduate studies. Curriculum, therefore, makes librarians disengage with research activities. Even though information studies knowledge have included research skills in academic programs, it has not improved the quality of research significantly. Research courses are considered too basic to impart skills necessary to deliver skillful and productive research. Lack of the resource requirements and time, as well as organizational support further, impedes research engagement in health librarians. Poor research agenda and little research confidence and skills promote disengagement even further. There are also concerns raised about the applicability of current research to the real situations, which demotivates the spirit of engaging in research activities. Finally, the generic nature of research and the fact that health librarians work in a diverse setting likewise make it hard for them to be involved with research (Short, McDonald, Turner, & Martis, 2010).

It is necessary to come up with research topics carefully and make research programs a priority in health librarianship to encourage more engagement. Appropriate research leadership also ensures that every procedure is carried out according to plan and follow-up procedures cultivated appropriately (Short, McDonald, Turner, & Martis, 2010). Evidence base in the context of health librarianship calls for improvement as well to enhance research engagement. Creation of awareness on the importance of health library and research to health practitioners in government institutions led to improved perception on the matter. More resources go to research in recent allocations, with the library as the pilot to execute the necessary changes. This concern and pressure from government ensure that health librarians are more engaged in research activities than any other role in their job description. Training and workshops for health librarians should be significantly adopted and improved. Enough time should always be availed in such workshops to enhance enough and proper knowledge sharing of the skills and insights gained in such training. Busy schedules of librarians which make it difficult to organize training sessions or workshop should likewise be made flexible to cater for learning sessions, which would bring improvement on the level of engagement with research to the librarians. Funding the workshops and training as well as research procedures should be enhanced at all cost by the responsible agencies.

In conclusion, research capacity has become a valuable aspect globally. The delivery of better patient care relies heavily on health librarianship. Research capacity development in health librarians has become a point of focus to many health sectors. Increased application of networks and collaborative research practices ensures research capacity building. Health librarians need to engage themselves more with research and change the present disengagement attitude in the field, which is a great impediment to research capacity development in health librarians. Governments also need to put more resources into research capacity development. Patient care advancement, therefore, calls for improvement in the research engagement and the evidence-based practice through enhanced skills. Proper training and workshops should be availed to the librarians to enhance their capacity in health research. The strict schedule for the librarians should likewise be flexible to enhance capacity development through training. 

 

 

 

References

Brettle, A., & Urquhart, C. (2012). Changing roles and contexts for health library and information professionals. London: Facet.

Rossall, H., Boyes, C., Montacute, K., & Doherty, P. (2008). Developing research capacity in health librarians: a review of the evidence. Health Information & Libraries Journal, 25(3), 159-174. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-1842.2008.00788.x

Short, J., McDonald, S., Turner, T., & Martis, R. (2010). Improving capacity for evidence-based practice in South East Asia: evaluating the role of research fellowships in the SEA-ORCHID Project. BMC Medical Education, 10(1). Doi: 10.1186/1472-6920-10-37

Wood, M. S. (2008). Introduction to health sciences librarianship. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press.