COVID-19 Educational Support Team: Librarians, physicians, and medical students collaborate to synthesize COVID-19 research for clinicians

Background: The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic created challenges for clinical teams in staying up-to-date with the vast amount of information being published about the virus. In order to best care for their COVID-19 positive and suspected patients, clinicians at the University of Chicago Medical Center needed information to be collected, synthesized, and disseminated for easy access. The clinical librarians were contacted to assist in finding and organizing articles, along with four medical students and a resident. This team’s objective was to support frontline clinicians and help guide decision-making in clinical care by answering clinical questions through critical reviews of COVID-19 literature.

Description: The clinical librarians were contacted in March 2020 to assist with finding COVID-19 literature. Due to the volume of material, four medical students and a resident were recruited to form the COVID-19 Educational Support Team. The team both summarized important articles and answered specific COVID-19 clinical questions emailed by clinicians. The librarians instructed the students on using databases and pre-print servers and critically appraising the information. The queries and article summaries were posted to a public webguide created for clinicians. The volume of questions led to the transformation of this service into a medical school elective in May with ten new students. The program was evaluated through a REDCap survey of clinicians who used the service to determine their view of usefulness. Students were also surveyed to determine elective improvements for the future.

Conclusion: From mid-March through May, a total of 90 questions were answered and 325 articles were summarized. This service was viewed positively by clinicians, with 100% of respondents expressing satisfaction and 78% reporting a change in thinking due to the syntheses. The success of the initial cohorts led to the development of an approved medical school clerkship for a similar synthesis service for non-COVID requests. With feedback from the clinician survey and the students who participated in the initial group, the clerkship was expanded to include three hospitalist mentors with clinical expertise who will work with the librarians to give didactic sessions along with the synthesis service.