Saturday 25 October 2014

Come shopping for books for us

The Artist's Wife
www.metmuseum.org
We are very keen to ensure that the books we buy are the books you want to read. 

We review catalogues, look at publicity from publishers, scan reading lists and peruse different web sites to try and find titles we think you might need.

What we like best though, is recommendations from our users. 

Our Books on Approval scheme means we have a collection of new publications sent directly from our supplier which are available for you to review.

Our current selections will be available at the Berrywood and Richmond libraries until Friday the 5th of December. Topics covered include:
  • Cardiovascular medicine
  • Geriatrics
  • Obstetrics and gynaecology
  • Psychology, psychiatry and mental health
  • Research
  • Study and revision guides
  • ...and many more
Of course we are always happy to have recommendations for new stock on any health related topic.

You can also find a list of titles we have recently purchased (including previous On Approvals) on our web site and all of our stock via the library catalogue

Monday 20 October 2014

European Antibiotic Awareness Day 2014 resources

18th November 2014
The European Antibiotic Awareness Day is an annual event, running on the 18th of November, designed to raise awareness of the threat of antibiotic resistance and to encourage best practice in antibiotic use (you can find the Department of Health's Antimicrobial Strategy 2013-2018 here).

This year Public Health England are running a campaign calling for everyone to pledge how they will make better use of antibiotics, via their Antibiotic Guardian site.

In conjunction with the Department of Health, PHE has produced a number of resources to promote European Antibiotic Day for both primary and secondary care. These include:
If you are using social media the hashtag for the campaign will be #AntibioticGuardian and you can follow the European campaign on Twitter.

There is also a short video available from Public Health England to accompany the campaign called Will you be an Antibiotic Guardian? This explains the issues with antimicrobial resistance and what the public can do to help.


Tuesday 14 October 2014

Ebola resources

Ebola virus courtesy of CDC Global
With the current Ebola outbreak featuring constantly in the media, and the possibility that there will be another UK case at some point, we thought it might be useful to produce a short list of information resources relating to Ebola.

UK Material

Department of Health 
The main source for the official announcements is Ebola - the UK government response

You can also get all updates from the UK Government by subscribing to the Ebola RSS feed or subscribing to an email news list.

Public Health England www.gov.uk/government/collections/ebola-virus-disease-clinical-management-and-guidance 
Ebola virus disease: clinical management and guidance for NHS Trusts and primary care

Expert interview: Is Ebola a risk to the UK? A blog from PHE's Director of Global Health  https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2014/10/15/expert-interview-is-ebola-a-risk-to-the-uk/

Association of Ambulance Chief Executives http://aace.org.uk/ebola-guidance-wider-resources/
Aimed at ambulance staff

NHS Choices www.nhs.uk/conditions/ebola-virus/Pages/Ebola-virus.aspx
Overview of Ebola, it's transmission, treatment and travel advice

Royal College of General Practitioners www.rcgp.org.uk/clinical-and-research/clinical-resources/ebola.aspx Common sense guide to Ebola for GPs and their teams

International Material

World health Authority www.who.int/csr/disease/ebola/en/
Situation reports on the current outbreak, fact sheets, technical information, publications and guidance

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control  
www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/healthtopics/ebola_marburg_fevers/Pages/ebola-outbreak-west-africa.aspx
EU based epidemiological information, together with risk assessments, surveillance information and more.

US Centre for Disease Control www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/index.html
The US based Centre for Disease Control has a dedicated section on it's web site which includes lots of information about symptoms, transmission, risks and the ongoing outbreak.

CIDRAP www.cidrap.umn.edu/infectious-disease-topics/ebola
Produced by the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, the site features news, analysis, resources and literature.

Doctors without Borders www.msf.org.uk/ebola
Interactive guides on Ebola, the current outbreak, treatment, a timeline for the outbreak and a blog featuring posts from people involved all over the world.

EbolaAlert www.ebolaalert.org/
A West African site run by volunteers featuring news, links to resources and more.

Médecins Sans Frontières  www.msf.org.uk/ebola
Information on the crisis in West Africa

Evidence Aid www.evidenceaid.org/ebola/
Information resources aimed at decision makers from the Oxford based organisation.

You can also stay up to date via Twitter using the hashtag #ebola


Free access journal article and information collections
With thanks to Keith Nockels at Leicester University who suggested many of these resources. 

Updated 13th November 2014

Friday 10 October 2014

We'd like some feedback on our new library catalogue

We have just launched a new version of our library catalogue, offering a more sophisticated searching experience. It will pull back results even if you misspell something (within reason anyway) and offers you a number of filters for narrowing down your search results, including publication date, author and loan period.


There is also an advanced search option if you want to use a more precise search strategy,

As with our old catalogue, you can also search for reading lists and see what we hold in stock for a wide variety of courses from the universities of Northampton, Leicester and Oxford.

Every time you conduct a search, the system automatically creates a link to an RSS feed. This means you can save the feed if you wish to keep track of new things on your chosen topic as they come along (see the excellent Potted Guide on Phil Bradley's web site if you want to know more about RSS).

You can also reserve items, have them sent to your NHFT library of choice and renew any loans you have via the catalogue by logging into your account (you will have previously needed to get your PIN from one of the libraries). Once logged in you can also create and save lists of titles you are interested in.

We think the new catalogue offers a more sophisticated "Google" type experience and hope it makes it easier for you to find the items you want as well as reserving and renewing items you have already borrowed.

More importantly though, we'd like to know what you think. If you have a few minutes, please have a look at our catalogue and then complete this very short (5 question) survey http://svy.mk/1xgBqdI

Many thanks...

Wednesday 8 October 2014

October Eyes on Evidence from NICE

Eyes on Evidence is a free monthly bulletin from NICE Evidence Services which reviews significant new evidence as it emerges and what this might mean for current practice.

In the October issue you can find:
  • Long-acting injectable paliperidone compared with haloperidol for maintenance treatment of schizophrenia
  • Sources of Clostridium difficile infection
  • Natural history and management of sigmoid diverticulitis
  • Effects of a patient handover intervention on rates of medical errors and preventable adverse events
  • Day patient treatment after short inpatient care versus continued inpatient care in young people with anorexia nervosa
You can find all the previous issues of Eyes on Evidence or subscribe to receive the bulletin by email on the NICE Evidence Services site.

There are also new Evidence Updates highlighting new information worth considering along side current guidance:

Wednesday 1 October 2014

Web site of the month: My NHS

My NHS
The Department of Health have just launched the My NHS service aiming to improve the transparency of health care related data by providing easy access to information about health and care providers. The site has quality indicators for:

The data on hospitals gives a dashboard showing CQC rating, Friends & Family test score, A&E performance, mortality rating and more. You can also review trust efficiency, safety and food data (you can see the results for Northamptonshire's acute trusts here).

The social care data reviews quality of life. use of care homes and user/carer satisfaction (Northamptonshire data here)

The public health services section lists indicators for breast feeding, uptake of the NHS health checks, screening and vaccination rates (Northamptonshire data here).

Public health outcomes data includes preventable mortality, smoking rates, obesity and physical activity (Northamptonshire data here).

Much of the data can be downloaded in a CSV / Excel format for further comparison.

The site is very new and there are plans to further develop it based on user feedback and to add more information over time.

My NHS is a useful tool collating statistical health and care quality indicators data from a number of different areas and placing it together in a easy to access form.