Abstract
At the Christ Hospital—a 555-bed, not-for-profit, Magnet-designated, acute care facility in Cincinnati, Ohio—staff nurses are actively encouraged by the hospital's Research and Evidence-Based Practice Council to participate in a journal club. In addition to providing a discussion mechanism for improving patient outcomes and satisfaction through research and evidence, journal club participation may also contribute to the research component of the hospital's registered nurse (RN) professional advancement program. The electronic resources librarian was approached by the council's nurse educators to explore options for online journal clubs (OJCs), primarily as a means of including more staff nurses on various shifts than existing face-to-face clubs allowed. A rationale for selecting WordPress as a hosting mechanism for the OJC sites and a detailed description of the technical process in establishing the sites are discussed in detail elsewhere 1. Since October of 2011, the electronic resources librarian has been overseeing technical support for numerous nursing OJCs throughout the hospital. Technical support consists of creating sites using WordPress as a site administrator; electronically inviting new members selected by the club's nursing leadership; creating WordPress posts for articles and discussion questions that nurse leaders provided; conducting orientation sessions for new clubs as requested; and addressing ongoing technical issues, such as lost passwords or access issues. In addition to providing technical support, the librarian has received permission from nurse leaders to join each club as a member, monitor the clubs' discussions, and post library-relevant comments as opportunities arise. The Christ Hospital library staff has a long history of participating as members on various councils in the hospital's nursing shared governance structure, but the inclusion of the librarian in the OJCs was the first attempt at assuming a role of embedded librarianship at the nursing unit level. As a means of assessing this new role and determining the impact of librarian participation in OJCs throughout nursing units, the librarian conducted statistical data analysis and surveyed nurse participants.
Highlights
At the Christ Hospital—a 555-bed, not-for-profit, Magnet-designated, acute care facility in Cincinnati, Ohio—staff nurses are actively encouraged by the hospital’s Research and Evidence-Based Practice Council to participate in a journal club
Data analysis showed that 19.2% (n514) of the 73 online journal clubs (OJCs) posts from January 2012 to December 2012 necessitated librarian involvement
The 14 nurse comments prompting librarian involvement were made by 9 different staff nurses from 5 different OJCs, 4 of which post articles monthly
Summary
At the Christ Hospital—a 555-bed, not-for-profit, Magnet-designated, acute care facility in Cincinnati, Ohio—staff nurses are actively encouraged by the hospital’s Research and Evidence-Based Practice Council to participate in a journal club. Using a process similar to that described by Ender, the author was able to receive real-time email notifications for all OJCs containing each commenter’s username, full comments, and the date and time the comment was made [6]. These comments were organized with Microsoft Outlook using club-specific folders and were monitored daily during designated times, so that OJC duties did not interfere with library duties. The library began tracking reference statistics in June 2012, and early data showed that only 4% (n540) of all reference transactions (n51,036) over the course of 6 months (June 2012 through November 2012) were related to OJC support; due to the fact that this was the first attempt to involve the librarian in an embedded role, it was determined that further analysis was warranted to provide rationale for the librarian’s participation as an OJC member
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