Health Sciences Librarian Participation in Continuing Education Initiatives: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Introduction Continuing education (CE) is an expectation of many healthcare professionals and librarians to maintain credentials and keep their skills current. Since librarians have experience providing instruction, librarian provision of CE seems a natural fit. However, delivering content to healthcare professionals can be challenging due to time constraints, failed outreach, uncertainty surrounding topics, and more. Librarians may be wondering how they can provide helpful CE when they are unsure how to address these issues.

Description Mindful of these challenges, we began a scoping review in February 2020 (search updated September 2021) to examine the literature on librarian instruction of CE for healthcare professionals. We conducted a comprehensive search across seven databases to capture all published articles on this topic. We also performed forwards and backwards searching of included studies, solicited real-life teaching materials from colleagues, and searched for grey literature using Google.

Outcomes The literature revealed CE topics, delivery methods, and descriptions of initiatives. It also revealed gaps, such as lack of clear descriptions of assessment findings, efforts to accredit sessions, comprehensive learning objectives, mapping sessions to information literacy frameworks, and more.

Discussion Despite the challenges, creating and delivering instructional sessions is a valuable contribution that connects us with our users. Learning from the past can allow us to improve our instructional services. Gaps in those lessons remind us that we should evaluate, benchmark and report our instruction so it remains resilient to the changing information landscape and allows us to build on the work of others.