Information Literacy » About
At Stanford School of Medicine, information literacy is defined by several key competencies. We believe that by graduation a student will be able to:
Identify, articulate, and communicate knowledge gaps
- Identify knowledge gaps in the course of practicing medicine.
- Articulate answerable clinical questions.
- Communicate patient questions to colleagues, including fellow clinicians and allied health and information professionals.
Navigate one’s information landscape in real-time
- Access a variety of resources (people, articles, patient information, personal expertise, etc.) to gather relevant information.
- Locate information about patient-specific conditions and scenarios, using a variety of multidisciplinary resources.
- Efficiently and ethically procure information outside of one’s current knowledge/experience.
Evaluate information and resources
- Understand sources of bias in clinical research.
- Determine the suitability of a study’s design to the type of question asked.
- Independently assess the reliability of the outcome measures.
- Determine the importance of the outcomes by translating them into meaningful summary statistics.
Apply information to improve the health of individuals and populations
- When making clinical decisions, balance patient factors, best evidence, and personal experience/knowledge.
- Express the relative risks and benefits of treatments and outcomes to patients and colleagues.
- Provide patients with appropriate information.
- Improve patient care by reporting the successful application of information.
Continue to build and expand information literacy skills over one’s career
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