Tuesday 30 October 2012

All new TRIP database

www.tripdatabase.com
The popular, free to use TRIP (Turning Research Into Practice) database has had a major overhaul and been relaunched.

TRIP has an easy to use basic search, as well some new features including a useful advanced search option and an innovative PICO (Patient/Population Intervention Comparison Outcome) search interface that easily helps you to break your search down into its most important elements and is useful for highly focused clinical questions.

The new PICO interface
 As well as searching for evidence, TRIP includes other kinds of content including videos, images, patient information leaflets and news. All of these are displayed on different tabs, allowing easy filtering of your search results. You can also filter your results by the type of evidence (systematic reviews, guidelines, primary research etc).

TRIP can also be used as a current awareness service. If you register with the site you can receive a monthly email of new content relating to your clinical speciality or area(s) of interest.

If you want to know more the screen cast with commentary below gives a brief rundown of all the latest features.


TRIP is an easy to use search tool with some powerful new features and is highly recommended as an alternative to NHS Evidence.

Friday 26 October 2012

Farewell to Francis Crick House

Due to pressures on space the Library Service will be pulling out of the commissioning HQ at Francis Crick House.

However, the service is currently still available to all NHS staff based in the building, and all of our services are available at the other library sites or via our web site www.library.northants.nhs.uk.

We will be packing and moving during the week of the 29th of October. The stock from Francis Crick will be integrated into the collections at our other libraries.

Monday 22 October 2012

Northamptonshire NHS YouTube channels

The NHS in Northamptonshire have a number of YouTube channels where you can find a number of locally produced videos.

The Northamptonshire Healthcare channel features service user stories and a video about Berrywood Hospital, amongst others.

Northampton General Hospital does not have a channel of it's own, but there are plenty of videos featuring the Trust to be found on YouTube, including the development of the sepsis box, the new cancer treatment unit and information on the OU pre-registration nursing course.

On the NHS Northamptonshire and Milton Keyenes channel  you can find over 30 videos, covering such diverse topics as personal health budgets, and the soon-to-be-infamous, Gangnam style disco hand washing video which was made to celebrate Global Hand Washing Day and features NGH and NHFT staff in disco mode!


YouTube - not just cute pets and people falling off things!

Monday 15 October 2012

The real cost of alcohol: map of alchol harm across England

Photo by Richmeyer on Flickr
Treating the effects of alcohol abuse costs the NHS £2.7 billion each year (£34 million in Northamptonshire). Alcohol Concern have produced an interactive map of alcohol harm for England  showing how this occurs.

The map gives a breakdown of information on alcohol misuse by local authority area, including the number of people drinking too much, alcohol related hospital admissions and associated costs, mortality and more. Statistics are also broken down by gender and age and there is the facility to compare different areas.

Friday 12 October 2012

New resource on flu and the use of GP services for winter 2012-13

Flu in England
GP Online have produced an "infographic" tracking the affect of flu on the use of GP services across the UK. It details numbers of visits to GPs and seasonal trends.

There is also an infographic covering England giving more detail including critical care admissions and mortality, as well as breakdowns by age and region.

The data will be updated on a weekly basis throughout the winter.

Wednesday 10 October 2012

Latest evidence updates from NICE

NHS Evidence
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence have released their latest evidence updates. The updates cover new evidence relating to NICE guidance. The updates highlight key points from the latest evidence (including the strengths and weaknesses of the research) and importantly, whether the new evidence will have an impact on the current guidance.

The current updates are:
You can also find a list of all the updates going back a year on the NICE site, arranged by date, alphabetically or by speciality area.

Sunday 7 October 2012

NHS Midlands and East Pressure Ulcers Resource

NHS Midlands and East are running a campaign called Stop the Pressure, aimed at eliminating grade 2-4 pressure ulcers by December 2012, improving care for vulnerable patients.

Pressure ulcers are a preventable problem that cause patients distress and treating them costs the NHS £3.8 million every day.

Stop the Pressure
On the site you will find:

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Need help finding health information?

PANIC! by Krysten_N
PANIC!, a photo by Krysten_N on Flickr.
Need to find information to inform your practice? Need to make a decision but don't know where to find the best evidence?

Don't panic!

Whether you're a manager, a clinician or a student, we can help.  There are still places left on our training courses for October and November that can help you navigate your way around the large and complex world of health information.

Our Evidence for Health course is a great introduction to finding healthcare related information on the Internet. This course is totally hands on and uses sites like NHS Evidence and TRIP, and even includes the advance searching option in Google.

If you need to find journal articles we have a literature searching course. You'll learn how to effectively search healthcare databases like Medline, the British Nursing Index or HMIC (Health Management) to find the information you need and access full text electronic journal articles.

Of course, once you've found the information, you'll need to know how to assess it, and our Critical Appraisal Skills programme can help. Our Introduction to Critical Appraisal will give you a basic understanding of the terminology and process, whilst our highly interactive Critical Appraisal in Action session gives you the opportunity to appraise a piece of research in a group facilitated by a librarian.

We can also create a tailored session for your department and can also do one to one sessions if you can't make any of our dates, and we can even come to you.

Look out for our 2013 training dates coming soon...