Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital Library

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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital Library

• Dawn Bassett
• LIBR538F
• Practicum Report
• April 5, 2005

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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital
LibraryIntroduction

• Located in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Riverview
  Hospital (RVH) provides service to adults
  affected by persistent or severe mental illness
  by providing excellent, specialized care for
  individuals with unique treatment challenges
• The medical library at RVH aims to help hospital
  staff accomplish these goals by collecting,
  organizing, and providing access to mental health
  literature with the ultimate goal of improving
  the quality of care of BCs mentally ill through
  evidence based clinical practice

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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital
LibraryRVH Library Staff

• Greg Rowell - library manager
• first big accomplishment was to get the library
  
• web content live on the hospital website,
• Tracy Walsh - library technician
• Jamie Smith - library technician

The RVH library website can be accessed at the
following URL, http//www.bcmhs.bc.ca/library/cont
ent_handler.asp  
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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital
LibraryProject History

• Initiated in order to acquire a deeper
  understanding of the types
• of questions that are commonly asked at RVH and
  their frequency
• Results will be incorporated into a Library
  Activities Report for
• 2002-2005.
• While reference data has been gathered by the
  library staff at
• RVH for many years, it was Megan Crouch who began
  to organize
• and classify reference data by creating a
  reference sheet that
• included
• the type of clinical question being asked
• information about the requestor
• the date
• the person who performed the search

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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital
LibraryProject History 2

• my mission

• to continue Megans work by completing the
  organization of the references, arranging the
  data into a tabular format, and offering an
  analysis of the results

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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital
LibraryMethods and Scope

• Reference sheets were considered first by year
• from January 2003 December 2004
• Questions were separated into two broad user
  groups
• 1. RVH staff
• doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, etc
• 2. community
• hospitals, mental health clinics, general
  medical community, patients and caregivers
  from all across the province
•  

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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital
LibraryMethods and Scope 2

• Questions were categorized by the following
  categories
• 1. Treatment specific
• - drug therapy or treatment
• 2. Drug specific
• - drug/drug interactions or adverse effects
• 3. Disorder Specific
• - general information about a disorder(s)
  including
• practice guidelines
• 4 Administrative
• - journal article or book requests
• - requests for information about legal issues
• - conference preparation information
• - human resource management and leadership,
• - information about research grants and
  funding
• programming

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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital
LibraryTables and Data Analysis
Table 1 Reference question totals by year
Amount of questions asked is on the rise in both
user groups
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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital
LibraryTables and Data Analysis 2
Table 2 Reference questions by subject
Disorder-specific information requests are the
most popular followed by administrative questions
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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital
LibraryConclusions

• RVH Library answers a great variety of questions,
  and is a valuable resource to the staff of RVH
  and other mental health clinics and care
  providers
• A deeper analysis might reveal gaps in the
  collection, or highlight the RVH librarys
  success
• I hope that my limited time working on this
  project has encouraged Greg to continue to
  evaluate and analyze the reference statistics

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Reference Statistics at Riverview Hospital
LibraryQuestions?

• Questions?