Open AccessOptimising real time clinical librarian support to enhance the evidence base in radiotherapy clinical protocols
Author(s) -
Carol-Ann Regan,
Simon Goldsworthy,
Jessica Pawley
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
library and information research/library and information research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2752-7336
pISSN - 1756-1086
DOI - 10.29173/lirg809
Subject(s) - general partnership , protocol (science) , clinical practice , radiation therapy , evidence based practice , process (computing) , software deployment , process management , medical physics , medicine , computer science , operations management , nursing , business , software engineering , surgery , alternative medicine , finance , pathology , economics , operating system
Clinical teams are professionally driven to adopt the latest evidence-based care ensuring optimal outcomes for patients. There can be delays in the latest evidence reaching practice. The radiotherapy multi-professional team in partnership with Clinical Librarians developed a lean process to undertake the real-time evidence-based live update of clinical radiotherapy protocols. Principles of Quality Function Deployment were deployed to create a lean process. The process was evaluated for the percentage difference to the radiotherapy protocol parameters over two years. Satisfaction of the live update was scored from 1: Very dissatisfied to 5: Very satisfied. Since 2014, 12 protocols have been through the process. The live update resulted in 80% of differences to the clinical protocol compared to the previous two years. Among 10 respondents, a mode of 5 was scored for satisfaction. This novel approach has been successful in providing a lean process ensuring that the latest evidence reaches radiotherapy practice.