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Library Research Skills for Pre-Health Students: Partnering with the
Pre-Health Advising Office

John Carey, MA, MLS, AHIP-Sa, Ajatshatru (A.J.) Pathak, MLS, MPHb

aAssociate Professor, Head, Health Professions Library, Hunter College, City University of
New York, New York, NY https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9891-5142 ,
jca0022@hunter.cuny.edu

bAssociate Professor, Health and Informatics Librarian, Health Professions Library, Hunter
College, City University of New York, New York, NY, apathak@hunter.cuny.edu

Cite as: Carey J and Pathak AJ. Library Research Skills for Pre-Health Students: Partnering
with the Pre-Health Advising Office. Hypothesis. 2025;37(1). doi:10.18060/28649

Carey, Pathak. All works in Hypothesis are licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0
DEED Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International. Authors own copyright of their articles
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owner(s), as long as the author(s) are acknowledged in the copy, and the copy is used for
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owner(s).

1

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9891-5142 
https://orcid.org/
mailto:jca0022@hunter.cuny.edu
mailto:apathak@hunter.cuny.edu
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/


Peer Reviewed Article Hypothesis, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2025

Abstract
Introduction: This brief report describes a library initiative to deliver health
professions-specific information literacy instruction to students in a college-wide Health
Professions Advising Program at Hunter College, a four-year institution within the City
University of New York (CUNY) system. The Pre-Health Advising Office “assists students on
their path to becoming a doctor, dentist, optometrist, podiatrist, veterinarian, and select allied
health fields, such as physical therapy (PT), physician assistant (PA), pharmacy, and
occupational therapy. Pre-Health students . . . receive advising, skills development, access to
programs and resources, application planning and review, and guided support.1" Many of
these students come to Hunter as transfers from two-year programs within the CUNY system
or at other institutions; others may be freshmen, post-baccalaureate, or non-degree seeking
students. In connection with a college-wide task force designed to increase retention and
graduation rates among transfer students, the Hunter College Libraries formed a Transfer
Committee to examine how the library can better support transfer students. In the Fall 2022
semester, after discussion with the director of pre-health advising, this committee reached out
to librarians at the Hunter Health Professions Library (HPL) to conduct information literacy
sessions for all students in the Health Professions Advising Program.

Methods: HPL librarians offer a “two-shot” series of workshops via Zoom every semester.
Scheduling and other information for each 80-minute session is tracked in the library’s LibCal
software and a Zoom link is provided by the director of the Pre-Health Advising Office. The
first workshop covers basic library resources and services, developing a research question, and
search strategies in databases. The second workshop, delivered one to two weeks later,
focuses on advanced topics such as literature reviews, evidence synthesis, and systematic
review tools and methods. The librarians provide a LibGuide on the Hunter College Libraries
website which summarizes and expands upon the content of both sessions.

Results: Informal feedback has been positive. The Pre-Health Advising Office now requests
the two sessions every semester. While the size of cohorts has varied from semester to
semester, these workshops consistently reach much larger numbers of students than do typical
library instruction sessions. The authors presented results from this program at the Annual
Meeting of the Liberty Chapter of the Medical Library Association in October 2024.

Discussion: These findings will be of interest to health sciences librarians who provide
instruction and research support to students pursuing admission to graduate health professions
programs, including transfer students. The workshops offered in conjunction with the
Pre-Health Advising Office greatly increased the outreach of HPL librarians’ instruction
efforts. These workshops can also have an enduring impact as they address skills and concepts
that will remain relevant for these students at varying stages of their academic careers or
future employment; to the authors’ knowledge, no other examples exist of workshops
covering systematic review methods for pre-health students. Further study will be needed to
assess how or whether the content taught in these sessions has contributed to student success
within the Health Professions Advising Program.

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Peer Reviewed Article Hypothesis, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2025

Introduction
This brief report describes a library initiative to deliver health professions-specific
information literacy instruction to students in a college-wide advising program at Hunter
College, a four-year institution within the City University of New York (CUNY) system. The
Pre-Health Advising Office offers counseling, resources, and guided support to students who
intend to apply to graduate or professional programs in medicine or allied health fields1.
Many of these students come to Hunter as transfers from two-year programs within the
CUNY system; others may be freshmen, post-baccalaureate, or non-degree seeking students.
In the Fall 2022 semester, after discussions between the director of pre-health advising and
the library, librarians at Hunter’s Health Professions Library (HPL) began to conduct
information literacy sessions for all students in the advising program.

Methods
HPL librarians offer a “two-shot” series of workshops via Zoom every semester. Scheduling
and other information for each 80-minute session is tracked in the library’s LibCal software
and a Zoom link is provided by the director of the Pre-Health Advising Office. The librarians
determined the content of each session in consultation with the director but thus far these
discussions have not included assessment of the program. The first workshop covers basic
library resources and services, developing a research question, and search strategies in
databases. The second workshop, delivered one to two weeks later, focuses on advanced
topics such as literature reviews, evidence synthesis, and systematic review tools and
methods. The librarians provide a LibGuide on the Hunter College Libraries website which
summarizes the content of both sessions and expands upon topics such as library access and
retrieving full text; interlibrary loan; citation management tools; and citation styles.

Results
While the librarians have yet to conduct any formal assessment of the program, informal
feedback has been positive. The Pre-Health Advising Office now requests the sessions every
semester. While the size of cohorts has varied, these workshops consistently reach much
larger numbers of students than do typical library instruction sessions (see Table 1). The
authors presented results from this initiative at the Annual Meeting of the Liberty Chapter of
the Medical Library Association in October 2024.

Table 1. Workshop Attendance by Academic Semester

Semester

Fall 2022
Spring
2023 Fall 2023

Spring
2024

Summer
2024 Fall 2024

Students
attending
per session
(N)

356 51 271 113 71 341

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Peer Reviewed Article Hypothesis, Vol. 37, No. 1, 2025

Discussion
These findings will be of interest to health sciences librarians who provide instruction and
research support to students pursuing admission to graduate health professions programs,
including transfer students. Costs of replicating this program elsewhere would include the
time and labor of instruction librarians, as well as resources likely already available at many
institutions such as online meeting software and a content hosting platform such as
LibGuides. These workshops greatly increased the outreach of HPL librarians’ instruction
efforts. They can also have an enduring impact as they address skills and concepts that will
remain relevant for these students at varying stages of their academic careers or future
employment; to the authors’ knowledge, no other examples exist of workshops covering
systematic review methods for pre-health students. Further study is needed to assess how or
whether these sessions have contributed to student success within the advising program.

CRediT Statement
John Carey: Investigation, Writing—Original draft preparation, Project administration.
Ajatshatru (A.J.) Pathak: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation,
Writing—Reviewing and editing.

References
1. Pre-Health Advising Office. About the pre-health program [Internet]. New York: Hunter
College Pre-Health Advising Office; 2024 [cited 2024 Nov 8]. Available from:
https://www.hunter.cuny.edu/prehealth/prospective-undergraduate-students/about-pre-health-
program

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https://www.hunter.cuny.edu/prehealth/prospective-undergraduate-students/about-pre-health-program 
https://www.hunter.cuny.edu/prehealth/prospective-undergraduate-students/about-pre-health-program 

