Scannable QR codes have the ability to deliver medical device operator information as a short video, when needed, and at the point of need, to reduce adverse incidents
What a treasure trove of images! I finally got around to looking at the collection of digitised images from the New York Public Library, and it's a wonderful place to spend a while. Maps, posters, ancient texts, drawings and manuscripts - over 600,000 images, without use restrictions.
Keeping up to date with the best evidence on treatment interventions is an essential part of clinical practice, but it can seem an overwhelming task for busy clinicians. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses provide a useful and convenient summary of knowledge and form an essential part of an evidence-based approach to clinical practice. However, these reviews vary in methodology and therefore in the quality of the recommendations they provide. Clinicians need to feel confident in their skills of critical appraisal, so that they can assess the relative merits of systematic reviews. In this article we discuss the strengths and limitations of different types of evidence synthesis to enable the reader to feel more confident in assessing the scientific information to use in clinical practice. Login using your SSSFT NHS OpenAthens for full text. SSOTP - request a copy of the article from the library - www.sssft.nhs.uk/library
Facet Publishing have announced the release of two new books, Practical Tips for Facilitating Research and Dynamic Research Support for Academic Libraries.
Higher education is in a period of rapid evolution and academic libraries must continually evaluate and adjust their services to meet new needs. Librarian roles are changing and new specialisms, such as data librarians are emerging. Activities are being driven by researcher requirements such as the demand for wider dissemination and the impact of research.
NHS England has paid for premium access to TRIP (Turning Research into Practice) on NHS PCs, offering more content and features (users on PCs outside the NHS network can still access TRIP, but may see fewer results).
This paper draws on information gained from literature on the peer review process and the authors' knowledge and experience of contributing as peer reviewers and editors in the field of health care, including nursing.
The Literature Search Process: Guidance for NHS Researchers has been updated. To access the new version either click on the link or go to our Research tab for more information about how the Library can help you with your research.
Rapid reviews are becoming increasingly commissioned, used and written about. But why is there this, relatively sudden, interest? Putting it bluntly, it’s because the cornerstone of evidence synthesis, the systematic review, is becoming increasingly out of touch with the needs of today’s healthcare systems.
The 2016 Spring Forum, 2020 vision: supporting open access and research excellence, took place on the 4th March 2016 at the Royal Society of Medicine. Many thanks to all of our speakers, sponsors and delegates who made our 2015 Summer Conference such a success.
Please see below for links to the speaker presentations.
Welcome to our new blog: Information Skills for Health.
Here you will find short bite-sized simple tips and tricks, resource features and etutorials that will help you to find and use information, to support evidence-based practice, CPD, revalidation and, ultimately, patient care.
It is aimed at NHS staff and Keele-based students working and studying in Staffordshire.
Below, you will find 6 free chapters from Facet books on information literacy, research support and the information behaviour, some of which are written by speakers at the conference.
A website dedicated to helping people in Staffordshire live a healthier life has been launched, just in time for national No Smoking Day.
Launched today (March 9) the Healthy Staffordshire Hub from Staffordshire County Council gives children, young people, adults and families advice on stopping smoking, reducing alcohol intake, achieving a healthier weight and getting more physically active.
The new website starts by asking people what they would like help with, before tailoring the advice to fit their health needs and help them make those all important changes.
The website, www.staffordshirecares.info/healthy is being launched as part of national No Smoking Day in a bid to give those wanting to kick the habit a bit of extra help.
Conclusions – In sum, the number of article processing charge funded open access papers has grown tremendously in recent years. Furthermore, open access papers have a citation advantage over toll access papers, both annually and across disciplines.
Here is a selection of new titles added to the catalogue this month. Browse all the latest titles here or check out the “New Books” display in the library.
This article is aimed primarily at psychiatry trainees, MRCPsych course organisers, College tutors, educational supervisors and clinical supervisors. It describes recent changes to the MRCPsych curriculum and examinations and discusses the different approaches that educators can utilise to best help their trainees. We describe how the content of MRCPsych courses can help prepare trainees for both the written papers and the clinical assessment of skills and competencies (CASC). We discuss ways of incorporating patients and carers into course development, innovative approaches using technology to enhance learning, the role of workplace-based assessments and how international graduates may maximise their pass rate. Login using your SSSFT NHS OpenAthens for full text. SSOTP - request a copy of the article from the library - http://bit.ly/1Xyazai
I joined a packed session at a recent ‘Shakespeare400’ conference at King’s College London which explored this question by looking at King Lear. In this play, the character of the king becomes increasingly ‘mad’. Having left his castle, he finds himself lost on a heath during a literal and metaphorical storm.
The following is a selective reflection on the course and on marketing the VLKS. Trying to fit what is essentially a commercial model to a public service environment. It’s not a review of the whole course or a summary of the contents. Go to Coursera for that.
It’s ten months since we started experimenting with blogshots as a way to share evidence, prompted by some conversations on Twitter when Teresa Chinn (@AgencyNurse) announced that she was experimenting with a form of microblogging. You can read more about how we developed them in this blog
We’re looking to expand our range of literature search services over the next few months, and to re-brand the service as ‘EvidenceSearch4U’.
We are looking at having different levels of service, to suit different requirements
Most library science surveys use Likert-style questions. After you read a study that reports results from Likert-style questions, you may think about using the results to guide some decision that you need to make. If so, then your job is to understand the validity of the results and how they apply to your decision. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details
If you're looking for images to use in a presentation or report, it can be a real pain to try and find ones that you can grab without legal problems. LibreStock is a free multi search engine that will check through over 40 different websites to find images that you can use. I quote from the site: "I know it's hard to understand complex legal licenses so let me break it down for you. all the photos indexed on LibreStock are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license. this means you can use these pictures freely for any legal purpose." This means that they are free to use, even commercially, you can modify, copy and distribute, and you don't need to attribute.
Staff, volunteers and community groups at libraries across Staffordshire are responding by putting their knitting needles to good use knitting Twiddlemuffs for patients with dementia.
And they are looking for more knitters to join them.
So what are Twiddlemuffs?
A Twiddlemuff is a thick hand muff with trimmings such as ribbons, beads, buttons and zips attached to the inside and out, designed to combat restlessness and agitation in dementia patients by keeping their hands busy as well as stimulating the mind.
As part of Staffordshire Libraries’ activities for Dementia Awareness Week, which runs from Sunday 15 to Saturday 21 May, libraries are encouraging residents to join with them to produce Twiddlemuffs to be donated to local charities and dementia friendly groups.
The editors of TRIP Database are pleased to have just published a number of short videos highlighting some of the main ways of getting the most from the resource.
ver the last week we've received questions about our autocomplete feature. I wanted to take the opportunity to clarify a few things. The autocomplete algorithm is designed to avoid completing a search for a person’s name with terms that are offensive or disparaging. We made this change a while ago following feedback that Autocomplete too often predicted offensive, hurtful or inappropriate queries about people. This filter operates according to the same rules no matter who the person is, as you can see in some examples here.
Victoria Treadway et al report on an NHS/public library partnership project between Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Wirral Council to support the wellbeing of people living with dementia, creating reminiscence boxes which are available in public libraries and in the local acute hospital.
This article is a practical guide for psychiatrists who want to apply basic and straightforward statistics in their research. It describes ways of summarising data and provides an overview of statistical tests for comparing patients’ characteristics. Measures of association such as correlation and regression are also explained, along with principal components analysis, a method for reducing the dimensionality of data. Explanations are clarified using data from the published studies. Login using your SSSFT NHS OpenAthens for full text. SSOTP - You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
Book review. Login using your SSSFT NHS OpenAthens for full text. SSOTP - You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
Smartphones are ubiquitous and commonly used as a learning and information resource. They have potential to revolutionize medical education and medical practice. The iDoc project provides a medical textbook smartphone app to newly-qualified doctors working in Wales. The project was designed to assist doctors in their transition from medical school to workplace, a period associated with high levels of cognitive demand and stress.
Critical appraisal of the literature is an integral and important part of surgical practice, but can this skill be taught to young doctors? The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of formal instruction regarding critical review and appraisal of journal articles, using junior surgical residents followed over the course of a 10-week long programme. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
Working in partnership with Norfolk Public Health, the Healthy Libraries initiative is delivered across Norfolk’s forty seven libraries. Socially-based group wellbeing activities include a monthly wellbeing or nutrition themed ‘neighbourhood lunch’ and adult colour-me-calm sessions. Exercise based activity has included hula hoop challenges and a pedal-powered smoothie bike, used to raise awareness of the benefits of the government-recommended target of five a day fruit and vegetable portions. Practical sessions include slipper swaps to prevent and reduce falls among the elderly.
Phil Bradley Training is being launched on Friday 7th October with two courses held in a central London location.
Earlier this year I sent out a survey asking what kind of training you wanted Many of you were kind enough to send me your thoughts. Since then, I’ve been developing what I hope will be a new type of training experience - effective, flexible, affordable – and designed to ‘last for life’.
A small amount of content may be out of date. Please delete the app and reinstall it from the App store. Android devices and all online web versions of the BNF and BNFC are unaffected.
The article discusses the aspects of accelerated learning. Topics include the importance of being business focused and learner centered objectives, the significance of being a facilitator and not a trainer, and the need to introduce variety in which learners can learn to provide more chance that the learners will be engaged for longer. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details
The article examines the role of live video can play in learning. Topics include video learning via platforms such as You Tube and Vimeo, the benefits of live video streaming, and the use of platforms such as Periscope and Blab in learning. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details
The AllTrials campaign (www . alltrials . net) challenges those of us who are involved in ‘medical’ (which includes nursing) research to ensure that all clinical trials are registered and all results are reported. The campaign is premised on the observation that the findings of around half of the clinical trials that have ever been undertaken have never been published, resulting in clinical decision making that is based on a biased evidence base. This also means that the risks taken by thousands of patients who consented to take part in an experiment was in vain.
A new library management system which will promote collaboration between cross-sector libraries in Wales was celebrated at an event in the National Assembly.
The new bilingual library management system will deliver cost benefits, greater collaboration, and the potential to share collections throughout Wales.
It will be shared by Welsh university libraries, NHS libraries, and the National Library of Wales. Bangor and Glyndwr Universities recently completed the roll-out of the system, finalising the implementation schedule across Wales.
Recently, we were involved in a project to update the Fertility Centre website and Andrew James of the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust’s Transformation Team had this to say.
Open access. Since the emergence of social media in 2004, a growing percentage of patients use this technology for health related reasons. To reflect on the alleged beneficial and potentially harmful effects of social media use by patients, the aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the extant literature on the effects of social media use for health related reasons on patients and their relationship with healthcare professionals. We conducted a systematic literature review on empirical research regarding the effects of social media use by patients for health related reasons. The papers we included met the following selection criteria: (1) published in a peer-reviewed journal, (2) written in English, (3) full text available to the researcher, (4) contain primary empirical data, (5) the users of social media are patients, (6) the effects of patients using social media are clearly stated, (7) satisfy established quality criteria.
The Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) data update for November 2016 has been published by Public Health England (PHE).
The data are presented in an interactive tool that allows users to view them in a user-friendly format. The data tool also provides links to further supporting and relevant information to aid understanding of public health in a local population.
The use of PowerPoint has become nearly ubiquitous in medical education and continuing professional development; however, many alternatives are emerging that can be used in its place. These may confer some advantages, but they also have potential drawbacks. It is helpful that educators are aware of these new presentation options and their pros and cons, including any financial implications and issues of data protection. This article considers the role of technology in teaching and learning, identifying underlying assumptions that are often made. It identifies and appraises technology that can be used with or instead of PowerPoint to best facilitate deep learning. The potential pedagogical benefits and practical limitations of these technologies are considered, and strategies are highlighted to maximise the impact of PowerPoint where it is the software of choice. Login using your SSSFT NHS OpenAthens for full text. SSOTP - You can request a copy of this article by replying to this email. Please ensure you are clear which article you are requesting.
Living systematic reviews (LSRs) are an increasingly common approach to keeping reviews up to date, in which new relevant studies are incorporated as they become available, so as to inform healthcare policy and practice in a timely manner. While journal publishers have been exploring the publication of LSRs using different updating and publishing approaches, readers cannot currently assess if the evidence underpinning a published LSR is up to date, as neither the search details, the selection process, nor the list of identified studies is made available between the publication of updates. We describe a new method to transparently report the living evidence surveillance process that occurs between published LSR versions.
Conclusions: For SRs on SMT, we recommend using the combination suggested by the Cochrane Handbook of Cochrane Library, MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase, and in addition, PEDro and Index to Chiropractic Literature. Google Scholar might be used additionally as a tool for searching gray literature and quality assurance.
Patient-facing vaccination literature had a Flesch Reading Ease score of 58.4 and a Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level of 8.1, in comparison with poorer readability scores for healthcare professional literature of 30.7 and 12.6, respectively. MMR scientific abstracts had the poorest readability (24.0 and 14.8, respectively). Sentence structure was also considered, where better readability metrics were correlated with significantly lower number of words per sentence and less syllables per word.
The Health and Care Act 2022 and concurrent reforms to the public health system have introduced a range of changes and some simplifications to the landscape of national bodies in the health and care system.
Here, we explain the core functions of the national bodies with the most significant role in setting policy for and shaping the operation of the health and care system. We also look at how these organisations are held accountable for carrying out those functions and the extent to which central government can direct them.
This paper outlines recent progress in developing accredited continuing professional development opportunities for NHS knowledge and library specialists with a focus on the development of digital and data skills.
Results
We included 79 studies and identified themes, including question realism, answer reliability, answer utility, clinical specialism, systems, usability, and evaluation methods. Clinicians’ questions used to train and evaluate QA systems were restricted to certain sources, types and complexity levels. No system communicated confidence levels in the answers or sources. Many studies suffered from high risks of bias and applicability concerns. Only 8 studies completely satisfied any criterion for clinical utility, and only 7 reported user evaluations. Most systems were built with limited input from clinicians.
Discussion
While machine learning methods have led to increased accuracy, most studies imperfectly reflected real-world healthcare information needs. Key research priorities include developing more realistic healthcare QA datasets and considering the reliability of answer sources, rather than merely focusing on accuracy.
Today a perceived lasting legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic is that more information literacy instruction is happening online than pre-pandemic, including ongoing adoption of synchronous modes of instruction in course-based and co-curricular contexts, and sustained integration of asynchronous learning resources either in standalone formats or as fundamental elements in what is described as a growing adoption of a more modular, scalable approach to information literacy instruction. At the same time, the role of in-person information literacy instruction has by no means been forgotten, with all OCUL libraries offering a majority of instruction this way by Fall 2022, when pandemic restrictions eased up. However, an ongoing legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic has been lasting changes in how librarians teach, and the nature of collaborative partnerships at work in shaping this information literacy instruction, to increasingly draw from a broader range of modalities to offer students a more flexible learning environment.
In November, we held our inaugural gathering, welcoming 20 colleagues from various NHS trusts. Included as a reminder / inspiration in case anyone from our team is going to this, or will consider going.
Conclusion: The results of this study show heightened complexity in ChatGPT-generated SCI texts, surpassing optimal health communication readability. ChatGPT currently cannot substitute comprehensive medical consultations. Enhancing text quality could be attainable through dependence on credible sources, the establishment of a scientific board, and collaboration with expert teams. Addressing these concerns could improve text accessibility, empowering patients and facilitating informed decision-making in SCI.
In summary, despite errors and miss rates with the current platform, systematic literature search using AI appears very promising, eliminating hours of human labor while improving search quality. As AI technology continuously evolves, efforts to refine and improve AI-based literature search platforms should be continued.
Results: The 100 systematic review articles contained 453 database searches. Only 22 (4.9%) database searches reported all six PRISMA-S items. Forty-seven (10.4%) database searches could be reproduced within 10% of the number of results from the original search; 6 searches differed by more than 1000% between the originally reported number of results and the reproduction. Only one systematic review article provided the necessary search details to be fully reproducible.
Short, pithy, and practical article about the uses, and pitfalls, of AI. It includes some helpful suggestions about how to start using it, and some of the issues to look out for.
In a single systematic review case study, citation searching was required to identify all included studies. Citation searching on WOS is more efficient, where a subscription is available. Both databases identified the same studies but GS required additional time to remove non-English language studies and locate abstracts. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
This editorial discusses the emergence of visual abstracts within journals to disseminate findings. Published alongside Aggarwal's retrospective study reporting that visual abstracts do not increase impact scores more than conventional abstracts of clinical research, it is suggested that visual abstracts may have a greater impact for smaller, specialty journals. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
Useful section on most common reasons why searches were rejected - could be part of a checklist for when we're doing peer review. Added to Evidence Wiki.
Critical incident technique is a flexible approach for libraries and information services, based on individuals’ experiences of finding and using information to help resolve a perceived problem. To read the full article, log in using your NHS OpenAthens details.
On 1 August, Dutch publishing giant Elsevier released a ChatGPT-like artificial-intelligence (AI) interface for some users of its Scopus database, and British firm Digital Science announced a closed trial of an AI large language model (LLM) assistant for its Dimensions database. Meanwhile, US firm Clarivate says it’s working on bringing LLMs to its Web of Science database.
This study seeks to understand the information needs of school nurses by conducting a needs assessment survey within the state of Illinois. A survey was disseminated through three statewide professional listservs to determine the types of care-related questions school nurses ask as part of their regular duties and which resources they use to answer those questions. School nurses’ information needs vary widely, and they rely on numerous sources to answer clinical questions. They are responsible for the well-being of hundreds to thousands of children. While they are comfortable searching for information, they are motivated to further develop research skills.
"[R]ecently I’ve enjoyed developing our Health and Wellbeing collection, creating some additional resources in the form of wellbeing bags for staff to borrow." This is a short mention in this blogpost - just wondered if it's something we could think about?
Although search engines sometimes highlight specific search results relevant to health, many resources remain underpromoted.5 AI assistants may have a greater responsibility to provide actionable information, given their single-response design. Partnerships between public health agencies and AI companies must be established to promote public health resources with demonstrated effectiveness. For instance, public health agencies could disseminate a database of recommended resources, especially since AI companies potentially lack subject matter expertise to make these recommendations, and these resources could be incorporated into fine-tuning responses to public health questions. New regulations, such as limiting liability for AI companies who implement these recommendations, since they may not be protected by 47 US Code § 230, could encourage adoption of government recommended resources by AI companies.