Skills and key education needed for clinical librarians: an exploratory study from the librarians' perspectives

BACKGROUND: A clinical librarian is a member of the medical team in many countries. To strengthen this new job, librarians need to acquire professional skills in order to provide information services to medical staff. In this study, we aimed to explor the skills required for the presence of a clinical librarian in the treatment team. METHODS: In this study, we sonducted a qualitative study in which 15 experienced librarians were interviewed in connection with information services. Also, a treatment team was involved in this study using purposive-convenience and snowball sampling methods. The data collection tool was a semi-structured interview that continued until the data was saturated; finally the data analysis was performed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Out of the total interviews, 158 primary codes and, 107 main codes were extracted in 25 subclasses. After careful evaluation and integration of subclasses and classes, they were finally classified into 13 categories and four main themes, namely clinical librarian’s role, professional and specialized skills, communication skills, and training programs. CONCLUSION: The results showed that specialized skills and training programs for the clinical librarian are defined based on his/her duties in the treatment team. We also defined the most important key skills for the clinical librarian in two categories of professional and communication skills such as specialized information search, content production, resource management, familiarity with various sources related to evidence-based medicine, teamwork, and effective communication. To acquire these skills, officials and policy-makers should develop and implement related educational programs at medical universities and colleges. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12911-021-01601-y.