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MLA Distance Education

Keeping Patients Safe: Roles for Information Professionals

Keeping Patients Safe: Roles for Information Professionals

MLA's Educational Webcast
Held November 16, 2005

To top of page Presenters

Judith G. Robinson
Assistant Dean, Library and Learning Resources, Edward E. Brickell Medical Sciences Library, Eastern Virginia Medical School–Norfolk

Judith G. Robinson was appointed assistant dean for library and learning resources at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) in 1995. EVMS is a community-based college of medicine and health professions that provides education, research, patient care, and clinical training through partnerships with hospitals and practice plans throughout the eastern region of Virginia.

Over the past ten years, Robinson and her staff have established a variety of programs to demonstrate the outcome benefits of integrating knowledge management and evidence-based practice into daily activities of faculty, students, researchers, and health care practitioners. Programs include a clinical medical librarian service and evidence-based health care courses in the medical school and physician assistant programs with librarians as co-course directors.

In 2001, the EVMS Library partnered with the EVMS Office of Research to establish an Institutional Review Board librarian program. The board's primary responsibility is to ensure the protection of human subjects involved in research at the institution. An EVMS librarian with expert searching skills was appointed to serve on both of the boards as an ex-officio member. As such, the librarian's role is that of a consultant, providing expertise to the boards throughout the review process.

Robinson currently is a member of the How's Your Health Hampton Roads? Community Action Committee, a branch the Hampton Roads Health Coalition, a partnership between the regions' major employers and local health care facilities and insurers. The EVMS library is leading a project to promote consumer driven health care throughout the region by improving access to the health sciences literature and decision making tools.

She received her master of sciences degree in library and information sciences from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. Prior to coming to EVMS, she served as associate director for administrative and public services at the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System, associate director for technical services at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Library, and online coordinator and reference librarian at Virginia Commonwealth University, Medical College of Virginia–Richmond.

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