Objectives: Access to high-quality information improves the quality of patient care, but lack of time and sufficient skills in information seeking can prevent access to information by clinicians. To solve this problem, clinical informationists can provide high-quality, filtered information for clinical team members. This study identified the core competencies that clinical informationists need to effectively fulfill their roles on clinical teams.Methods: Participants were selected purposefully from clinicians and medical librarians. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using qualitative content analysis.Results: The authors identified six competencies—communication, research, education and training, domain knowledge, information services, and technology—which together were used to develop a “CREDIT” model of core competencies for clinical informationists.Conclusions: The CREDIT model can be used as criteria for evaluating the performance of clinical informationists as well as for developing and assessing clinical informationist educational programs and curriculums. This article has been approved for the Medical Library Association’s Independent Reading Program.

Clinical informationist (CI) is one of the current trends in the field of medical librarianship and information science. CIs are members of clinical care teams, and their main duty is to fill the gap in the information needs of health-care workers and patients using information sources. They need an official and standard education. This study aims to identify the educational goals and needs of CIs. To this end, a scoping review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Item for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses guidelines. The ISI Web of Science, Scopus, Proquest (MEDLINE), Science Direct, Emerald, ERIC, Cochrane, and Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts were searched. The Journal of the European Association for Health Information and Libraries was hand searched for relevant studies. A total of 1026 studies were extracted, and 38 studies were selected for the final review. The review resulted in identifying 18 goals in cognitive, emotional, and psychomotor areas. Furthermore, the educational needs were identified in eight educational needs including research method and statistics, education, medical knowledge, information and librarianship science, clinical environment knowledge, evidence-based knowledge, information technologies and systems, management, and leadership. Although part of these educational needs can be met through general medical librarianship and information science education, further specialized education for CIs requires specific aims and curriculum. Thus, the results of this study can be the basis for future studies regarding the competencies of CI in order to provide a more precise and detailed curriculum based on these educational needs.

This study aims to identify the most important barriers in medical library and information sciences (medical LIS) education in Iran and to present suitable solutions to remove these barriers. In this qualitative study, data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with 18 medical LIS PhD students and then analyzed using a qualitative content analysis approach. Educational barriers in medical LIS divided into four categories: curriculum barriers, department and faculty member barriers, official education and professional needs barriers, and student and graduate barriers. Medical LIS education requires major changes, including changes in the current curriculum, quality evaluation of educational groups and faculty members, matching curriculum with current stakeholder needs, as well as addressing motivational and employment barriers for graduates.

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