Medical library resources now broadly available

February 5, 2010

By Mark Ferguson

Medical students and doctors on campus have always had easy access to the Health Sciences library, and now that convenience has been extended across the province.

The Saskatchewan Health Information Resources Partnerships (SHIRP) is an initiative of the university and the provincial government designed to provide library resources to any health-care professional with access to the internet. So whether you work in Buffalo Narrows or Saskatoon, the same resources are available to practitioners anywhere in the province and that, said Virginia Wilson, SHIRP co-ordinator, improves the quality of health care for everyone.

“There is a lot of emphasis on evidence-based medicine, nursing and health care,” said Wilson. “You’re looking for the best evidence out there (and) to be able to find journal and online material and use it. That’s important for students and health-care practitioners, and it’s important for patient care.”

Creating a provincial-wide library took some time, said Wilson, and in 2003, the university began receiving funding to increase its electronic resources in the Health Sciences Library. The next step was to provide a subset of the electronic journals and resources to the three biggest health regions in the province – Saskatoon, Regina and Prince Albert. Phase three involved rolling out access to the 10 smaller health regions, and finally, in 2008, the fourth phase provided resources to all health-care professionals.

“The feedback, so far, has been fabulous,” said Wilson, who travels around to the different health regions teaching health professionals how to use the SHIRP library website.

The website currently gives users access to 13 health databases, 6,000 full-text journals, 144 full-text books, and 200 clinical support tools. There is also a form to request articles if the database does not have what the user is looking for.

Most of the users, said Wilson, are physicians, nurses and pharmacists, but more and more chiropractors and other professionals are logging on.

Uptake on the SHIRP Library is going pretty well, but trying to get the word out has been difficult. “I feel like we’re sitting on a gold mine, and so we want to find different ways to tell professionals that this is for you, there’s no cost to you, and you can have access as long as you have the internet.”

Wilson said SHIRP is unique in Canada, as Saskatchewan is the only province with resources for all health care professionals.

“My colleagues in B.C. and Alberta say to me, ‘if they can do this in little Saskatchewan, then we can too.’”