Librarians On-Call: A Review of Search Tools Utilized by Fourth Year Medical Students on a Mock Call

OBJECTIVE: A team of medical librarians were given the opportunity to observe the medical readiness of fourth year medical students (MS4s) for finding evidence-based clinically relevant information (drug choice, patient care, etc.) during an on-call simulation. For this initial analysis, we observed the search tools utilized by MS4s when asked to recommend treatment for simulated patients. METHODS: 10 librarians were asked to evaluate 1 module of a simulation required of 240 MS4s as a gauge of their readiness to be residents on call. A Night On-Call Simulation program was used to record their responses & online navigation. The MS4s attended sessions over a period of 4 weeks, and the recordings were scored within 24 hours of submission in most cases. RESULTS: Out of 240 MS4s, 221 successfully submitted a recording for librarians to review. The librarians used these recordings to compare how many times MS4s chose and navigated: point of care tools, library databases, and/or outside sources. CONCLUSIONS: Some MS4s were unsure of where to start answering medical questions at the point of care. The MS4s rarely utilized library resources and sometimes chose outside sources like Google, AI, etc. Those who chose literature databases displayed poor use of filters to focus on the most recent and best evidence-based papers. This gave the librarians a baseline to improve educational services and resources for medical students participating in this night on-call simulation.