Background: Access to tailored evidence syntheses can support frontline clinical staff to make evidence-informed care decisions, but evaluation of such services requires understanding of user needs within context.
Objectives: We evaluated an Evidence Access service by clinical librarians in a mental health trust in northern England to assess impacts on staff decision making and identify areas for improvement.
Methods: The evaluation was guided by the integrated Promoting Action on Research in Health Services framework. We evaluated the service through a survey, semi-structured interviews, and service mapping with the library team.
Results: Staff who used the service valued it highly and particularly appreciated the rapid response and trusting relationships with library staff. Mental health nurses required proactive support to encourage them to access the service.
Discussion: The service could be used to generate clinically relevant research questions in collaboration with researchers, but would require support for the negotiation of the value of different questions and understanding of each other's needs and priorities.
Conclusions: An Evidence Access service provided by a clinical librarian is highly valued by mental health staff. Collaboration between researchers and clinicians to identify and respond to evidence gaps would require commitment to building relationships and capacity.
Keywords: collaboration; evaluation; knowledge synthesis; knowledge translation; librarian, clinical; mental health services; research networks.
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