187: MEDICAL LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE STUDENTS' READINESS AND ATTITUDES TO ENTER HOSPITALS AS CLINICAL LIBRARIANS: A CASE STUDY OF ISFAHAN UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Expert searcher, teacher, content manager, and patient advocate are clinical librarian roles. Clinical Librarian has a potential role in facilitating evidence-based practice in hospital settings. Nowadays, clinical librarian has a role in the treatment group and even in clinical decision makings. The Clinical librarian job is empty in Iran's hospitals but efforts are emerging that clinical librarian enter to Hospital jobs. So the purpose of this research was to investigate the medical library and information science students' readiness to enter hospitals as a clinical librarians. METHOD: The survey method was used. The population of this research was medical library and information science students (N=74, BSc, MSc, PhD students) in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. The instrument utilized in study was a questionnaire developed by the researchers themselves and its validity was established through a panel of experts. The reliability of questionnaire was determined by calculating the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. RESULTS: Great number of students indicated clinical librarian's mission is to facilitate access to quality information that is necessary for improving health. Students largely stated their current curriculum didn't prepared to clinical librarian mission so they didn't have enough self-confidence to work with physicians and the medical team. CONCLUSION: Health services are facing organizational change. New technologies and rapid growth of medical knowledge and information creates a demand for new ways of providing information. Clinical librarian programs may deliver patients specific information in a timely manner. To get this target students must be prepared with courses helping them to improve clinical knowledge; so medical library and information science curriculums must change in each level.