2014 Medical Librarians Month – Making a Difference in Swaziland

Posted by Patricia Devine on November 21st, 2014 Posted in: Funding, News from Network Members, News From NNLM PNR

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Janet Schnall’s experience as an Invited Lecturer to a newly open nursing school in Swaziland and a return trip to teach  students and faculty preparing to open a medical school is next in our stories about librarians making a difference.

By Janet Schnall, MS, AHIP
Information Management Librarian
University of Washington
Seattle, WA

Have I as a librarian changed lives? I believe YES!

Last year as University of Washington Health Sciences Library liaison to the UW School of Nursing I received an email from a former UW PhD nursing student, Gloria Nam, whom I had previously assisted with her dissertation, asking for book donations for a new nursing school opening in Swaziland.

Dr. Nam, PhD, MSN, FNP, RN was to become the Head of Department of Nursing Science and Dean of Student Affairs at Swaziland Christian University (SCU). Although I did not have nursing texts to donate, I did inform Dr. Nam about HINARI, the World Health Organization program that enables low and middle income countries to gain access to a large collection of health-related journals, eBooks and databases, such as PubMed.

Shortly after, I was asked to come for several weeks as Invited Lecturer to this newly opened nursing school in Swaziland to introduce online health information resources to the faculty and students, train them on the HINARI World Health Organization program, and assist the new librarian in establishing a health sciences library at the University. Swaziland is a resource-poor country and in great need of educating health professionals to administer to the population of 1.2 million. The country is smaller than Wales and its life expectancy is 48.66 years (2011), showing the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS. There are only approximately 6,000 nurses and 200 doctors presently in Swaziland.

In preparation for my trip, I consulted several librarians around the US who had worked with health professionals and health students in Africa.

All these contacts were extremely helpful with advice and willingness to share their materials, libguides and PowerPoint presentations. I also used the HINARI online materials to create a “Swaziland Health-Related Information Resources for Students and Faculty” libguide so the students and faculty would have access to the information while I was in Swaziland and after I left.

Once in Swaziland, I presented lectures introducing HINARI and health information resources, such as PubMed and MedlinePlus, and did individual consults with the students, faculty and librarian, using 4 PowerPoint lectures with screen captures of the databases and eResources as a backup for intermittent Internet access. I was able to flip back and forth between live and screenshot demonstrations. I met with the librarian who had no background in providing library services or establishing a library to discuss how to arrange the physical library (500 nursing and health-related books had been donated), classification schemes, collection development policies, a checkout system, online resources, and more.

I have just returned to SCU to lecture again for one week on HINARI and eResources to the newly entered students from 6 different health-related departments and also the medical faculty who are preparing to open the first medical School in Swaziland next summer. Yesterday, after one of my lectures, a masters student came to me for additional assistance. He was a refugee from the Congo, whose mother and brother had been killed, who had escaped and lived in the forest for 2 months before capture and torture, and had sought asylum in Swaziland. He now attends SCU. After working with him on how to use PubMed and connect through HINARI to the full-text articles, he had tears in his eyes and said the information I had brought with access to over 13,000 health related journals, eBooks etc. through HINARI would allow him to complete his research and degree.

So have I changed lives? Yes! The faculty and students were hungry for health-related information for their clinical work and studies. Where students and faculty previously only had access to information on Google for their papers and clinical work, they now have a plethora of reliable health-related resources available to them via HINARI. That certainly has changed their lives, allowing them to be better informed present and future health care providers.