Welcome to extreme embedded librarianship!

Welcome to extreme embedded librarianship! Join in my adventures as a medical librarian riding out with Indianapolis EMS, the largest 911 ambulance service in Indiana. The AmbulanceRidingLibrarian is devoted to all things informative, funny or odd in emergency medicine, disaster preparedness and medical librarianship.

Monday, January 14, 2013

What's a librarian doing on an ambulance?



What's a librarian doing on an ambulance?
Good question.  I’m learning, researching, networking and usually having too much fun. But that's not all I do.

The Fellowship provides an opportunity for me to learn about prehospital and in-hospital emergency medical services, mass casualty incidents and disaster preparedness for health services.  That means I get to observe in settings that aren't usually open to information professionals.  I spend time in the emergency department, 911 dispatch, on an ambulance, with the medical directors and IEMS chiefs in their emergency response vehicles as well as unique & elaborate simulated mass disasters.

I have the best health informationist job ever.  And that's not just because I get to ride out on the life-flight helicopter.  I work with intelligent, hard-working, caring health professionals - all who have a wicked sense of humor.  They made this librarian feel very welcome.  Our research positively affects the lives of the people we serve.  I couldn't ask for more.

Just so you know it's not all take-take-take, here are some of the services I provide for the four agencies I serve:
  • Content curation from legal, medical, government, social media and open source resources
  • Review mobile apps on emergency medicine, HAZMAT, drug calculators and other EMS subjects
  • Systematic reviews & literature searches 
  • Teach bibliographic management software
  • Special projects, including a community paramedic program.  This research will translate into cost-effective, quality emergency health services for Indianapolis. 
When I'm not holding back waves of ambulance-induced motion sickness, my regular work day involves:
  • research
  • generating, finding, organizing and distributing information
  • ILL and remote access services.  (These might be some of the simplest services I offer, but it really makes my colleagues happy.)
  • project management
  • telling bad jokes
This Fellowship would not be possible without the efforts and good humor of these agencies.

4 comments:

  1. Love the top pic with the ambulance AND your hair in a bun. :) Looking forward to your posts!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What an awesome opportunity! I'm looking forward to reading more posts.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Congratulations. This is so awesome. I'm so excited for you. Before working in libraries I was an EMT, firefighter, and emergency dispatcher. I've always felt like that career prepared me for anything in the library. It's going to be great reading about your adventures. Can't wait.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm a former paramedic - now librarian and find this fascinating.. I can't wait to follow your adventures

    ReplyDelete
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