MHVL Hospital Ward Book Carts
Vaughan Public Libraries
Innovation Synopsis
The Mackenzie Health Vaughan Library is located within the Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital. Our primary customers are hospital staff, patients, and their families.
Many hospital patients receiving health care are bedbound and unable to access our services; the library needs to come to them, where they are recovering. However, due to health and privacy protocols, library staff are not permitted in patient rooms.
Through an innovative partnership with the hospital's volunteer department, we have developed a Library Book Cart. Facilitated by hospital volunteers, this cart goes room-to-room, delivering library materials. Book cart Items are purposefully curated to be engaging, informative, thematically appropriate, and in a variety of languages.
This initiative also brings greater awareness to our public library branch within the hospital, as a welcome destination to all who visit, recover, or work at the hospital.
Challenge/Opportunity
The library’s location within a medical hospital is an opportunity to provide library services and collections to hospital patients who desperately need engagement, outside their medical needs. However, many patients are bed-bound and not physically able to leave their rooms. Library staff are also not permitted to access patient rooms for important privacy and health reasons. In short, barriers existed between the library and the community we seek to serve.
To meet this challenge, a collaborative relationship with the hospital’s Volunteer Resources Department was established. This volunteer team distributes library materials to these rooms as needed, via our library book cart.
Key Elements of Innovation
Staff curate Book Cart material, including magazines and books, intended to be engaging and appropriate for patients recovering from a health issue. Patients can also make specific requests, providing library staff with the opportunity to employ readers' advisory and bibliotherapy skills in selecting materials. Given the sensitive nature of many patients' situations, we take a progressive and forgiving approach to items not returned that were borrowed from this cart.
Achieved Outcomes
The Stroke and Internal Medicine Wards were the first wards to welcome this cart. Other wards - such Mental Health and Geriatric Care - soon followed.
At this point, the cart has traveled the hospital 72 times, reaching roughly 1000 patients. Over 300 items have been distributed.
