Health Sciences Librarian, Nursing
Twitter @AmandaRossWhite, Bluesky @amandarosswhite.bsky.social
Bracken Health Sciences Library, Queen’s University
Ontario, Canada
“What nursing does is often not visible.”
Since the pandemic, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, has doubled its number of nursing students. While that isn’t necessarily a surprise for Health Sciences Librarian Amanda Ross-White, MLIS, AHIP, it has meant needing to rethink how they deliver education programs. “The pandemic opened people’s eyes to the need for nurses. We need to do a better job of retaining nurses as well as encouraging them to go into the profession,” she explains.
“As a liaison librarian, I’m here to meet the information needs of the School of Nursing, which includes teaching undergraduate students how to find and evaluate information, meeting their collection needs, both print and non-print, teaching graduate students about information and assisting graduate students and faculty with their research. I also teach a systematic review course to Nurse Practitioner students.
“At Queen’s University, librarians are part of the faculty, so I also get to do my own research, which has lately focused on predatory publications, but is eclectic.”
BMJ: The size of the nursing program at Queen’s has doubled since the pandemic. What do you think are the major causes?
Amanda: The pandemic really opened a lot of people’s eyes to the nursing shortage that has been going on for quite some time. It predates the pandemic. But what nursing does is often not visible, especially by policymakers, so the pandemic opened people’s eyes to the need for nurses. We need to do a better job of retaining nurses as well as encouraging them to go into the profession. The pandemic also gave more high school students the ability to see nursing as a viable career that they could make money at and be guaranteed a job. Universities also saw nursing as a profitable program. These things together encouraged Queen’s to increase the number of spaces for undergraduate nurses.
We also have a nurse practitioner program, and with the long-standing shortage of primary care practitioners, nurse practitioners are seen as part of that solution. The increased number of nurse practitioners and nurse practitioner students also means more work for me!
BMJ: How has the library needed to adapt to the sudden increase in enrollment and, presumably, additional faculty?
Amanda: We’ve certainly had to think more about how we deliver our education programs. I’ve always prided myself on developing one-on-one relationships with graduate nursing students. The ability to help guide them through their research program as they go through has been valuable. As those numbers have increased and my needs to support the undergraduate program have increased, I just can’t develop those one-on-one relationships as easily. We’ve had to use TAs to deliver some of our teaching and we’ve had to have students do more work outside the classroom.
BMJ: Has this experience altered your approach to long-term planning and preparation?
Amanda: I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how much students need to understand search and how to evaluate information. I’m moving a lot of my teaching to spending less time talking about searching and more time talking about information evaluation. Nurses will be the ones to teach patients in many cases, so having a lot of knowledge about how to evaluate those free Internet resources is critical. A lot of basic search features in databases and search engines have improved. It’s less important for students to find everything there is to know on a topic than it is for them to understand what it is they’re finding.
Where I once spent a lot of time showing them how to find subject headings in CINAHL, I’m now spending more time talking about predatory journals and how information can be manipulated. But this, too, means more work for librarians, especially on complex topics where the nursing students are aware they lack the skills to find things. They are eager to use our expertise in search.
BMJ: Patient education and empathy are essential skills for nurses. How do you help facilitate this understanding? What resources do you rely on to help teach evidence-based practice?
Amanda: Students need to understand the entire information landscape, even if they’re never going to be publishing their own research. They also need to know how point of care tools take that research and use it to develop tools they can use at the bedside.
While I still teach CINAHL and the importance of reading and understanding the research literature, I often use point of care tools to point them to the primary sources too, especially as undergrads. I have them develop a patient handout by taking those point of care tools, like BMJ Best Practice, and translate topics into lay language. It’s an interesting way to see the information landscape from start to finish. They need to understand what questions a patient might have and how they might find better ways to communicate about research than googling a study.
BMJ: Do you have any advice for other nursing liaison librarians facing similar challenges?
Amanda: I still feel that nursing liaison work is the ‘poor cousin’ of the medical school, particularly for my nursing librarian colleagues at schools that don’t have a medical school. Many of them have multiple liaison responsibilities and much more to juggle in collections or curriculum development. I think it is so important for nursing librarians to develop strong connections with other colleagues working in similar areas. Nursing can be very demanding on librarians. That’s both a positive and a negative. I wouldn’t trade it for anything!
BMJ: The Bracken Health Library website provides a wealth of information to students and faculty. What other activities do you find helpful when introducing faculty and students to the library and its resources?
Amanda: I like to emphasize the evolution of information sources. It’s a lot easier to understand ebooks when you see how they developed from print books. It’s why I still believe in hands on education whenever possible. I show first year students print books and the same edition as an ebook, which allows them to compare how these two resources are the same and yet different. I also show the students how the library can be used to have fun by showing them how the streaming services we subscribe to for the film studies program can also be used for a movie night with their friends.
BMJ: What is the most rewarding aspect of your career?
Amanda: I especially love seeing students as they launch their careers as nurses, knowing that I played a role in helping them develop the confidence to work in such a demanding career. If they started as undergraduates, I’ve come to know them over four years and watched as they learned and developed their thinking skills. I’ve had nurses come back and send me emails to thank me for what I’ve taught them. That’s the greatest reward.
BMJ: What is the most challenging aspect of your career?
Amanda: Certainly, the most challenging part of being a liaison librarian is the emotional labor. These students come at 17 or 18 and often have very limited life experiences. Working as nurses, they are exposed to trauma, as well as the normal challenges that come from a major life transition. Librarians are often seen as ‘safe’ people. They can come to us with their academic challenges and aren’t afraid to say, ‘I don’t understand’ because they know we don’t mark them. We don’t have the power that the full-time faculty have.
Many students treat me like a knowledgeable aunt or a big sister, and it’s an emotional burden that I’m not equipped for. The university has worked hard to develop more mental health support for students, but it takes a village, so we all end up doing it to some extent.
BMJ: What sparked your interest in a library science career?
Amanda: I owe my career to my friend Marjo! As an undergraduate student at McGill, I didn’t know what direction my life would take, but Marjo was a library technician at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Montreal. She told me I’d be great at librarianship! I only had a little experience, but I knew she loved her job, loved being able to help healthcare workers, and was someone I truly admired. She helped me understand what her work was like in a hospital library and about other kinds of libraries, too. She told me I should apply to library school, so I did, and I have yet to look back.
About Amanda
Amanda has been at Queen’s for 19 years, serving most of that time as the nursing liaison librarian. Outside of work, she spends time with her kids and husband, who is also a librarian. Her daughter is a horse girl, so a lot of time is spent at the barn. She describes grooming horses as her way of “destressing!”.
Interviewed by Lauren Jones, Head of Marketing, BMJ Americas