Abstract:

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) was introduced in Malaysia in the early 2000s and is now actively discussed in the medical community. However, the level of knowledge and skills of the health sciences librarians are still low. Several nationwide events were held to create awareness and train medical librarians in the country during the pandemic. Such programs are critical for medical librarians to expand their expertise to meet the demands of clinicians and researchers in making judgments based on the best available research. The workshops aim to introduce an evidence-based practice process and opportunities for collaboration between medical librarians and medical doctors, identify the basic study design for clinical medicine, focus on clinical questions, peer-review search strategies, assess the risk of bias in published studies, improve librarians' critical assessment skills, and improve understanding of clinical research study design, biomedical statistics, and clinical trials. Medical librarians play a crucial role in advancing medical research; the partnership will widen the scope of the librarians' profession to meet contemporary demands. A series of workshops have been conducted to educate the health sciences librarians, during the pandemic with the collaborations of Universiti Malaya Library and the Medical Librarians Group, Malaysian Librarians Association. Pre- and post-surveys have been developed to test the level of understanding of the participants of the workshops. One recent consequence of this workshop was the collaboration of UM librarians with a team of evidence-based medicine professionals, clinicians, and medical students to build the Clinical Evidence Retrieval Service (CERS). CERS is a platform that aims to assist clinicians by retrieving the best available evidence regarding COVID-19. The outcome of the workshop, a platform regarding COVID-19, was developed. The platform aims to help clinicians by retrieving the best evidence regarding COVID-19. This service is provided by a team of evidence-based medicine experts, librarians, doctors, and medical students. In conclusion, the health sciences librarians who joined the workshops learned that searching for evidence is essential for clinicians to find answers based on evidence and practice them. Therefore, a collaboration has been done with the Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya team to develop a Reusable Learning Object (RLO) to enable students to search for literature and answer clinical questions.

Keywords:

Evidence-based medicine, systematic reviews, health sciences librarians, trainings.