What's your poison? A sober analysis on alcohol and health in the media

Alcohol is everywhere  in the media at the moment. It's often hard to open a newspaper or watch the news without being bombarded with different, and often contradictory messages about alcohol. Some stories focus on the dangers of binge drinking whilst others tell us a glass of wine can help us to lose weight or even reduce the risk of a heart attack.

Photo by Danicuki

Behind the Headlines from NHS Choices have produced Whats your Poison? a report which analyses the media's relationship with alcohol research, and the science behind it. More importantly, it also tells us what this means for anyone who drinks alcohol. You can find What's Your Poison on the NHS Choices web site.

Issues with journals and databases on NHS Evidence now resolved

NHS Evidence have now announced they have isolated the problem that was affecting the journals and databases service and have put in place a temporary fix to ensure the service is fully functional.

A permanent solution will be incorporated into the next release of NHS Evidence, due on the 16th of November.

Issues with journals and databases on NHS Evidence still unresolved

The disruption to the Journals and Databases service on NHS Evidence is still currently unresolved. Users may find both are still running slowly and timing out periodically (but they do both still work).

NHS Evidence have said the issues are being investigated as a top priority and they are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible (all the current issue with the NHS Evidence service are listed on their Service Update page).

We'll keep you posted...

Major changes to Google Reader will effect our Health News Service

Daily Health News

The Official Google Reader Blog has announced some major changes to the service from next week (currently the exact time scale is unclear), including the removal of the sharing feature. This means that shortly we are no longer going to be able to use Google Reader to provide you with daily news updates.

Google say the sharing functionality will be added to their Google Plus platform, but we will need to investigate whether that can provide us with the same service, or whether we will need to seek an alternative.

Consequently their may be some interruption in the service whilst we investigate Google Plus and see what alternatives to the existing Google Reader service may be available.

Ongoing problems with the databases and journals on NHS Evidence

There is an ongoing problem with the databases and journals services on NHS Evidence. Currently the service is running very slowly and searches can take a long time to complete or even time out and give an error message (although this is not happening all the time).

NICE are aware of the problem and are currently working to resolve it as a matter of priority.

CQC national report on dignity and nutrition review

This review was a targeted inspection programme of some NHS hospitals. It looked at whether older people are treated with respect and whether they receive the nutritional support that meets their needs.

You can find the following reports on the CQC web sites in relation to the inspection programme:

• An overview giving the national picture from the inspections which you can find here
• Inspection results from individual trusts which you can find here
• Locally, Kettering General Hospital were inspected and you can find the report here

Emerald Management First - information for managers

Are you looking for information on healthcare management? The library has a subscription to a package aimed specifically at health managers. The Emerald Management First site includes access to a collection of electronic journals, plus lots of other content.  

http://first.emeraldinsight.com

New for 2011! Our subscription now includes access to a grand total of 120 e-journals which you can access from your desktop, both at work and at home. You can also access the site from your mobile phone via this link. The subscription includes access to journals in several different collections including:

·   Health Care Management

·   Human Resource Management

·   Education

·   Accounting and Finance

·   Information and Knowledge Management

·   Learning and Development

·   Industry and Public Sector Management

·   Managing Quality

·   Strategy

Additional content includes:

·   Articles written by practicing experts on healthcare and management,  HR, finance, marketing and other topics

·   Case studies

·   Briefings

·   Interviews

To access this resource, (and lots of others too), you will need an Athens password. If you don’t already have one, click on this Athens Self registration link.  It’s easy to do and takes just a few minutes. If you’d like to find out more about Emerald Management First, you can download our user guide here or you can contact us.

A guide to health care related iPhone Apps

Countess of Chester Hospital Library Service have produced a guide on useful healthcare related Apps for the iPhone. 

The guide covers Apps for anatomy,  clinical guidelines, decision support, clinical calculators, education, news and alerts. It also features some topic specific Apps for cardiology. dermatology, mental health and more.

Some of the Apps are free whilst others do have to be purchased. 

You can find a copy in the Resource Guides section of our web site

The easy way to find clinical guidelines

www.patient.co.uk

If you are missing the Guidelines Finder from the old NLH site, or simply want an easy way to find all UK clinical guidelines on a particular subject, the Patient UK may have the answer.

They have produced a simple A-Z list of all UK guidelines by topic. This list includes those produced by

• NICE
• Prodigy (formerly the Clinical Knowledge Summaries)
• SIGN
• The Royal Colleges
• Other professional health organisations 

To access this list simply go to: www.patient.co.uk/guidelines.asp