The Medical School’s new curriculum includes the Becoming a Doctor course series. It is in this setting that the Health Sciences Libraries team of Medical School Librarians — Merete Christianson, Ryn Gagen, and Brooke Olson — meet with every first year Medical School student across the Twin Cities and Duluth campuses to provide a session on Searching the Literature at their initial week of the Becoming a Doctor series.  

Dr. Cathy McCarty and Dr. David Power serve as the Co-Leads for the Public Health thread in the new curriculum. In this capacity, they want to make sure medical students understand the fundamentals of Evidence-Based Practice. “We have created a curriculum for year 1 and 2 students which we call Evidence Based Clinical Information (EBCI),” says Dr. Power. He explains that the Searching the Literature sessions are the very first modules of the EBCI curriculum. 

But this collaboration on ECBI isn’t the first time our team of Medical School Librarians have brought their expertise to build Evidence-Based Practice skills. They have joined in partnership with Dr. Power to bring Evidence-Based Practice training to the Family Medicine Clerkship for years. “I recognize librarian expertise in Evidence-Based Practice and health literacy, so I of course reached out to librarians when we first considered developing the new Searching the Literature session,” Power shares.  

Working better, together

And so they got to work! The team of librarians and physicians worked together to formulate the class structure and activities for the Searching the Literature sessions.

Dr. McCarty described how librarian expertise contributed to the creation of this new course, “They were absolutely key in the design,” she says. “We discussed our overall goal and learning objectives, and they took it from there to design, develop, and deliver the majority of the content, including active learning for the students.” 

The Medical School Librarians taught students how to identify resources and methods for finding the best evidence to answer a clinical question. “They are introduced to the idea of asking an answerable research question, typically written in the PICO (Patient, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome) format,” explains Power.  

Active learning reinforces essential skills

The librarians also integrated active learning into the sessions, “We worked to make this introductory class informative and engaging by having students practice what they learned during the class,” said Christianson. McCarty adds, “All of the student feedback from these sessions has been very positive. They especially appreciated the active learning component and introduction to sources they had never known about previously.”

Dr. Power and Dr. McCarty agree that it is essential that medical students and future physicians of all specialties know how to search the literature. Dr. Power notes that through this course, medical students are introduced to concepts of varying levels of evidence which they will need to build upon for their careers. Dr. McCarty adds that these skills, “will be crucial at every step of their education, from problem-based learning to presentation of cases on clinical rotations, to review of the latest evidence when they are practicing physicians.”

One of many touchpoints

As a team, the Medical School Librarians have many touchpoints to students and faculty alike.  The more formal opportunities that come with their involvement in the Family Medicine Clerkship and the Becoming the Doctor series pair with other requests for teaching, research consultations, literature searches, and systematic reviews that align their librarians with the information needs of the Medical School.  

“This Becoming a Doctor course is a really excellent opportunity to let students know — right away in their medical education journey — that they have medical librarians available to help them,” explains Olson.

“Our Medical School Librarians make it very clear that they are available to students for the entirety of their education and are willing to be contacted with any questions,” says Dr. Power. “We hope this session continues for many years.”