Naoise Standing, Clinical Outreach Librarian, Kingston and Richmond NHS Foundation Trust
International Clinical Librarian Conference: 18th and 19th June 2025, Devonshire Place, Leicester
I was lucky enough to be awarded a bursary to attend the International Clinical Librarian Conference (ICLC) by the Health Libraries Group this year after submitting in a successful application.
I’m a newly qualified librarian, having finished my Master’s degree in September 2025. I have over five years of experience in various roles in academic libraries, and in November 2024, I took my first health role as the Clinical Outreach Librarian at Kingston & Richmond NHS Foundation Trust.
Receiving the bursary to attend ICLC meant I was able to learn new skills and knowledge in a pivotal time at the beginning of my health information journey. I am still shaping and developing my role, so this conference came at a fantastic time in which I could learn from the talks and others attending the event. What better opportunity than to attend a conference specifically for your job role?
Whilst I was initially a little nervous to enter a conference where I didn’t have that many prior connections, I was lucky to accidentally end up at a table of entirely new health library staff! By chance, all of us at the table on day one of the conference had been working in the health sector for six months or less. We were therefore able to navigate the conference together and help facilitate new introductions to those few connections we already had.
There was a great variety of talks that happened across both days that covered so many different aspects of health librarianship, and it is difficult to narrow down what to focus on in this piece.
- The long paper that made the greatest impression on me was titled ‘Together yet apart: Working together as solo Clinical Librarians to develop connections’. The talk was delivered by Rayanne Byatt from South Warwickshire University NHS Foundation Trust and Lisa Mason from George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust.
The talk focused on the development of a new clinical librarian service at one of the Trusts, and how they were able to embed this service through collaboration. The key to success appeared to be building strong connections throughout the hospital to get the library service more widely promoted. Through building connections, the librarian was able to increase engagement with clinical and non-clinical staff, provide more embedded services such as attending MDT meetings and policy ratification, and even create library champions.
This was very interesting for me as I am currently developing the clinical outreach librarian service in my trust. Whilst we don’t have another trust that we collaborate with, we merged the Kingston NHS Foundation Trust with Richmond in November 2024 – prior to the merger, the staff in Richmond did not have access to a library service.
It has inspired me to reach out to further departments and get involved with wider events across the hospital as a way of building connections and getting our library service out there. For example, we are hoping to run a Library Open Day later in the year – whilst this will be in the main hospital library, we are aiming to run a related pop-up session for the Richmond community staff to improve our visibility and connections there.
- The next talk that I found very useful was a lightning talk by Kate Clifford from King’s College Hospital NHS Trust, titled ‘Is there anybody there? Engaging learners during online training sessions’.
Kate spoke of her experiences of providing increasing levels of online training and how it can be difficult sometimes to engage participants when all you have is a screen. She tested two different online engagement platforms over the space of three months: AhaSlides and Wooclap. Both platforms have free usage, are NHS-compliant and Kate found they increased engagement much more than her traditional sessions.
These online platforms allow for interactivity in the format of short quizzes, anonymous ways to ask questions, and more features. I have recently begun delivering Health Literacy Awareness training, with my online sessions delivered through Microsoft Teams proving to be the most popular. I am hoping to be able to use these online engagement tools to help participants feel they can more actively participate, which may better consolidate their learning.
- The final talk that really left an impact was a lightning talk by Hannah McGivern from Bodleian Health Care Libraries, titled ‘From lab to library: a researcher’s reflections on becoming an information specialist’.
Hannah gave a very interesting insight into her journey from an academic research background to becoming a health librarian. Whilst overall her talk was fascinating, the section that left me thinking was her discussion about the concept of Tea Trolley Teaching.
Tea Trolley Teaching involves the clinical librarian taking a trolley to a clinical area to provide a base for micro-teaching sessions and time for questions. In Hannah’s instance, she was invited to host this on a busy Critical Care Unit – this seems like a fantastic way of going out into clinical areas to build a connection with staff in their own environment. It can be hard for staff on our wards to find time to come up to the library space, so this concept seems like a great way of bringing a pop-up information service to them for a short while.
Hannah, alongside a few other authors, wrote a journal article on this service for the Nursing in Critical Care journal titled ‘Tea trolley teaching in critical care: integrating evidence-based practice with library services’ – I absolutely suggest anyone interested in this method to check the article out as it is an insightful read.
Overall, the conference was brilliant. I learnt so much and developed some great connections to share practice with. I am very thankful to HLG for the opportunity to attend, and I hope to return in the future!
Health Libraries Group 