El documentalista como facilitador en la toma de decisiones informadas: de la teoría a la práctica

The use of reliable data from scientific literature through models close to evidence-based clinical practice are basic to foreseeing the consequences of clinical decisions in contexts of uncertainty. To take informed decisions it is needed to have the ability to to recover, analyze and critically judge the quality of sou rces and evaluate the levels of scientific evidence for later application. This process can be either endangered or enhanced by several factors. The aims of this paper are to analyze the key aspects in which librarians influence the integration of scientific evidence in clinical practice and to discusse on the role that health libraries should have. A literature review was conducted using MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL and LISA. Review articles and original research aimed to study the role of health librarians in improving the integration of scientific evidence in clinical practice have been analyzed. Works related to critical thinking, clinical decissions processes and library services have been taken into consideration as well. Several organizational and individual factors act as barriers to informed clinical decision making, as lack of time for reading and implementationof the results, lack of skills or experience in searching for information, lack of training or participation in projects of research, etc. If several interventions are combined, including active and continued training by health librarians, it can help improve the weaknessess. The evidence shows that excellence in informed clinical decision-making requires well trained health professionals to conduct a search for effective information and to evalua te critically the results. Librarians can contribute to this process and, consequently, improve patient attention through team work with health professionals. This scenario raises the need to expand the training of librarians and redefine library tasks and services to other disciplines.