Report from MAC Vision Scholar
Erica Brody
Student Vision Scholar
MAC 2015
I found my inspiration at the 2015 Annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association. The conference program provided lots of opportunities to learn about initiatives to help our patrons and support the professional development of medical librarians. It was great to learn about the program to increase research skills among librarians and the environmental scan of systematic reviews conducted at the University of Maryland. Similarly, I enjoyed hearing about digital medicine resources for millenials and the FOAMed movement opening access to medical education.
The conference also allowed me to get to know medical librarians from as close as my home institution, UNC-Chapel Hill, to those practicing several hundred miles away. In particular, I was pleasantly surprised to meet so many librarians interested in patient education, starting the first afternoon of the conference. I enjoyed Kerry Dhakal’s lightening presentation about librarians partnering with nurses to improve heart failure patient education at Inova Hospital. During the welcome reception, Kerry and I discussed the possibility of collaborating on a future patient education project for my master’s thesis. I was truly inspired by the librarians who visited my poster about cancer caregiver information and shared their knowledge of resources about the topic.
My experience at this regional meeting further solidified my interest in medical librarianship. I look forward to learning more about how I can contribute to this field at the MLA conference in May 2016.