Authors: Misa Mi, Yingting Zhang
Objectives
This study investigated how health sciences libraries provide services to lead, promote, and support initiatives in cultural competence in health professions education or patient care and to examine health sciences librarians’ opinions on cultural competence in relation to library services and professional development. The study serves as needs assessment for our goal to develop a continuing education course on cultural competency for health sciences librarians.
Methods
This is a quantitative research design. Data has been collected with a survey questionnaire including eliciting demographic information, addressing health sciences libraries’ status in provision of culturally competent services and librarians’ perceptions of the importance of cultural competence. The questionnaire was pilot tested with a convenience sample of health sciences librarians to enhance the validity and then administered via SurveyMonkey to MEDLIB-L subscribers of the Medical Library Association. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the collected data.
Results
The survey results revealed that most of respondents (156, 89.1%) indicated the importance of provision of culturally competent library services. The majority of respondents (162, 93.1%) perceived the importance of cultural competence for health sciences librarians. 81 (46.3%) respondents reported to have training and 87 (49.7) indicated no past training experience in cultural competence. When asked if they were interested to take a CE course in cultural competence, 139 (79.4%) expressed their interest.
Conclusion
The research findings contributed to our understanding what types of library services are provided to develop or support cultural competency initiatives and how health sciences librarians perceive cultural competence for librarians. The results are useful for developing future continuing education courses.
