Patient & Family Library Celebrates Third Anniversary

On March 7, 2018, the Patient & Family Library (PFL) celebrated its third anniversary. Over the years, the PFL has provided service to over 5700 people, including patients, visitors, staff, students, and the general public.The graph below shows the distribution of needs people have had when contacting the PFL, whether they come in in person, write to us by online chat or email, or call us on the phone. This also includes requests for information that clinical team members make on behalf of their patients; nurses and LIPS – whether inpatient or outpatient -- did you know that you can submit a “consult order” via Epic, in order to connect with our “Information Rx (Library)” service?

Since our new tracking system was initiated in July 2017, we’ve logged over 1600 “encounters.” While our new system is more accurate than the previous one, this is still a low estimate; it equals about 10 each day we were open for service. Groups of people are typically logged all together in one encounter, so the actual number of individuals using the service or space is larger.

Although this graph only represents the past 8 months or so, the pattern has been much the same since we opened, revealing that the PFL meets a wide range of needs.

The PFL service desk, which is located in the PFL space in the main lobby of University Hospital, is staffed by ten Health Sciences Library team members, mostly medical reference librarians. In addition to the walk-in service in the lobby, the PFL manager, Lydia Witman, MLIS, also brings information to hospital bedsides, when requested by UVA team members. As a bedside nurse or LIP, you can order an “Information Rx (Library)” consult in Epic, just as you would order a PT or Social Work consult! You can tell us in the order what exactly you’d like the patient/family to have, and we will find it and bring it to the patient’s room.  

Whether it’s at the PFL desk or at the patient bedside we, as reference librarians, love digging for answers to medical questions. Some of our favorites from the past three years include: a husband who wanted to learn more about the inoperable cancer that was just discovered in his wife while she was having surgery for something else that day; a stroke education handout written in Serbian; and “What does ADL mean?” – we weren’t sure if it was some kind of new cholesterol but when looked it up, we were able to tell the person that it was, in fact, Activities of Daily Life. She had certainly found the right place to translate “medspeak” about what her husband should do at home.

Whether helping with MyChart, answering an urgent medical question, providing a quiet space, or meeting any of a myriad of needs, the PFL team provides a valuable service to patients, families, and others, at the UVA Health System and beyond.