Navigating Burnout: Strategies for Re-engaging in Systematic Review Work

Date: Wednesday, October 23, 2024, 1:00pm, Central time

Health science librarians are increasingly tasked with supporting complex systematic review and evidence synthesis projects that require specific skills, resources, and capacity. Without adequate training, support and infrastructure, these demands can lead to chronic job stress, i.e., burnout.

If you work on systematic reviews and are feeling stressed and burnt-out or want to avoid burnout, Katherine Downton, Christi Piper, and Ben Harnke, three experienced reviewers, will show you how to relieve and prevent burnout and re-engage in professional life. They’ll share their understanding of burnout and, using interactive polling and scenarios, engage you in dialogues concerning a range of complex situations related to systematic reviews.

In this interactive webinar they will:

• Describe the characteristics of professional burnout, with a focus on how systematic review work contributes to burnout
• Explore various challenges via realistic scenarios, ranging from solo hospital librarian settings to large academic library settings
• Identify systematic review service options that reduce stress-inducing situations
• Create strategies for advocating for structural changes that may help reduce librarian burnout

You’ll leave the webinar with practical strategies and valuable resources that will enable you not only to prevent burnout but also to re-engage in professional life with greater feelings of engagement, enjoyment, and productivity.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the webinar, you will be able to:

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Define and understand characteristics of professional burnout
• Identify potential causes of systematic review work burnout
• Generate strategies to re-engage in your work

Audience

Health Sciences and other librarians who conduct systematic reviews or other evidence synthesis tasks.

Presenters

Ben Harnke, MLIS* and Christi Piper, MLIS, AHIP* have been members of a long-evolving and now mature systematic review search service for around a decade. Many of the changes to the service (waitlist, protocol form) were specifically designed to manage systematic review service demands with limited capacity. But, simply having processes in place does not necessarily minimize burnout. Along the way we made sure to track key statistics (waitlist time and numbers, lost reviews due to wait time, time to complete a systematic review) connected to the service so that we could advocate for more systematic review service resources from library leadership. Ben also comes out of K-12 teaching, where burnout is a constant specter.

Katherine Downton, MSLIS* has years of experience providing expert search services, participating on systematic review teams, and training students, faculty, and clinicians in searching for evidence.  Katherine recently joined the Strauss Health Sciences Library as a Research Informationist and contributor to the library’s systematic review service.  She also has past experience as a Coordinator of Instruction in libraries and has served as a liaison to diverse fields in the health and social sciences.

*All authors are in the Education & Research Department, Strauss Health Sciences Library, University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus.

Registration Information

• Length: 1.5 hour webinar
• Date: Wednesday, October 23, 2024, 1:00pm, Central time
• Technical information:  Login to access the live webinar, resources, evaluation, and certificate.
• Register, participate, and earn 1.5 MLA continuing education (CE) contact hours.