The QR pods include codes linking patients directly to all of their online services such as their website and registration pages for online appointments and repeat medication.
As you can see in the diagram illustrating the pod design, the pods also have dedicated sections linking to their social media sites and a wealth of self help guides, educational videos such as antibiotic awareness and carers services, national and localised health promotional campaigns as well as localised services.
NHS specialists and patients have joined forces to launch the UKs first freely accessible app review website specifically aimed at Stroke and Brain Injury.
The website, which can be accessed at www.my-therappy.co.uk, helps people find the right app for their recovery and rehabilitation.
It offers a database of apps tested and recommended by clinical specialists and expert patients. The apps also come with a star rating and genuine user feedback and reviews.
Open access. Book review. Spirituality and Narrative in Psychiatric Practice: Stories of Mind and Soul Edited by Christopher C. H. Cook, Andrew Powell and Andrew Sims. RCPsych Publications, 2016, £30.00 (£27.00 for College members), pb, 204 pp. ISBN: 9781909726451
Telling stories is probably as old as human culture. Our ancestors used storytelling to entertain, instruct and make sense of their experience. A psychiatric history, when well taken, should be more than a fact-finding mission to provide a diagnosis and treatment plan. To be effective in providing treatment, helping with healing and promoting recovery, we need to know what matters to our patients. This includes the realm of belief and practice encompassed by the broad term spirituality. A book then that explores both spirituality and narrative is welcome.
Open access. Book review. The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist's Memoir of Depression By Linda Gask Summersdale 2015, £9.99, pb, 272 pp. ISBN: 9781849537544
Linda Gask is an eminent academic psychiatrist with an outstanding international reputation. I state this upfront because it is none too obvious from this book – owing to her self-effacing style – and in my opinion, it is very relevant. I should also declare an interest as Linda and I were in the same year at Edinburgh University's medical school and I have heard small snippets of this story from her over the ensuing years.
We have been featuring apps of the week in the library and on Twitter and Facebook recently. In case you have missed any we are also including them in our blog posts. Here are the latest 3, NHS Smokefree, NHS Safeguarding and NHS Do OD which is about changing culture in the organisation.