Achieving quality together: a University/Health Organization partnership to create a province-wide library service

Introduction Alberta Health Services (AHS) is responsible for providing all healthcare services to the residents of the province of Alberta, Canada, from pre-hospital emergency response to acute inpatient care. AHS was created in May 2008 when Alberta merged twelve health authorities into one province-wide health region. Prior to this merger, library services were delivered in a variety of ways and were not consolidated. Before moving forward to create a province wide service, Alberta Health Services needed to determine what services were needed, and then identify the best approach to delivering those services. Methods An environmental scan was conducted to describe the current state of library services. A representative sample of key stakeholders were identified and interviews conducted. An eighteen question survey was distributed to all healthcare practitioners and physicians in 2011, asking demographic, usage, resource preference and impact questions to determine what services were important province wide. Results Consultations with key stakeholders emphasized the importance of access to evidence based information and library services to support healthcare practitioners and administrators. 1195 practitioners and physicians responded to the survey. Libraries were identified as a valued resource, with 77% of respondents indicating they were library users. Respondents also identified electronic resources, and ease of access to these resources as most important. Discussion The survey and consultations provided evidence of the value of library services to Alberta healthcare practitioners and that these services needed to be provided equitably across the province. The collaboration with the University of Calgary was providing many of the services that practitioners were requesting. Building on the existing relationship with the University of Calgary, an innovative collaboration is being developed, to fulfill the common vision of delivering high quality information services equitably to healthcare practitioners in Alberta Health Services