Health sciences librarian

      Health sciences librarian

Duties and responsibilities: Health sciences librarians are information professionals, librarians, or informaticists who have special knowledge in quality health information resources. They have a direct impact on the quality of patient care by helping physicians, allied health professionals, administrators, students, faculty, and researchers stay abreast of and learn about new developments in their fields.

Using materials and tools that range from traditional print journals to electronic databases and the latest mobile devices, health sciences librarians devise and use innovative strategies to access and deliver important information for patient care, research, and publication. This can mean answering a surgeon's call from a hospital emergency room for rush information, to helping a researcher develop a systematic review article for a prestigious journal by conducting an expert search of the literature. They may be called on to connect licensed electronic resources and decision tools into a patient's electronic medical record. They may be asked to find consumer health information in a patient's native language.

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ealth sciences librarians can do all of these things: they are reference and consumer health librarians, web managers, medical informatics specialists,  chief information officers, embedded information specialists, copyright and licensing experts, and data managers, as well as educators, patient safety advocates, and knowledge managers. 

Salary:  $52,293 to a high average of $116,200 per year.

Education: To enter the profession, at least a master’s degree in library or information sciences is required. A background in sciences, health sciences, or allied health can be helpful, but is not necessary. 

 

Reflection: well to become one is good