A SURVEY OF PATIENT ACCESS TO HOSPITAL AND MEDICAL-SCHOOL LIBRARIES

The American Medical Association (AMA) Library and Information Managem ent Division conducted a survey of 481 randomly selected hospital and medical center libraries. Data were obtained from 307 libraries (63.8% ). The tabulated results showed that 58.1% of responding libraries all ow patient access without restrictions. Another 19.9% allow patient ac cess with restrictions, such as physician approval (13.4%) or various other limitations (6.5%). Many of the surveyed librarians (67%) said t heir institutions have separate nontechnical libraries for patients. M edical library access was strongly or somewhat supported by 89.6% of t he respondents; 6.1% were somewhat opposed, and 4.3% were strongly opp osed to patient access. Approximately 10% of the libraries surveyed pr ovided no patient education forum. The AMA trustees used the results o f the survey in deciding whether to encourage hospitals and medical sc hools to make their libraries accessible for use by patients and their families.