European Antibiotic Awareness Day resources

18th of November

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).

The Department of Health has produced a number of resources for use in conjunction with European Antibiotic Day for both primary and secondary care.

Among the general items available are:

• A briefing with key messages
• Posters aimed at patients
• A leaflet
• Quizzes and crosswords
• Case studies in antimicrobal stewardship

There are also:

• Resources specific to secondary care including a prescribers check list and posters
• Resources specific to primary care including a web banner and the target antibiotics tool kit

You can also find a number of short videos on YouTube that could be used in waiting rooms and other public areas to deliver the message (the audio from these is also available for download as an MP3 file).

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 may mean for current practice.

In the October issue you can find:

Training in patient-centred clinical consultations
A Cochrane review notes that training in patient-centred approaches for healthcare professionals may have positive effects on patients' experiences of consultation processes.

Increased risk of venous thromboembolism with glucocorticoid use
A Danish case-control study finds that use of glucocorticoids is associated with an increased risk of venous thromboembolism.

Weight in pregnancy and risk of operative delivery
A cohort study shows that women who gain large amounts of weight during pregnancy are at increased risk of needing operative delivery.

Advanced airway management after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest
A prospective population study suggests that, compared with bag-valve-mask ventilation, advanced airway management is associated with lower rates of favourable neurological outcomes after out-of hospital cardiac arrest.

Physical activity and behaviour during school break times in British white and Pakistani girls aged 9–11 years
A study suggests that British Pakistani girls may be less active than British white girls during school break times.

Evidence Updates
NICE has recently published Evidence Updates on:

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Local health profiles for 2013 published

Public Health England have published details of the local health profiles for England. The profiles give a snapshot of health related issues for each county and local authority area.

There are also interactive maps on the site that show a number of different indicators, down to district level (and a guide is available to help you get the most from them).

Within each profile you can find information on:

• Social issues, including deprivation, crime education levels
• Children & young people's health, including alcohol, obesity and teenage pregnancy
• Adult health and lifestyle
• Disease and poor health
• Life expectancy and causes of death

You can find all the profiles for the different areas of Northamptonshire here.

Web site of the month: Scirus

www.scirus.com

Scirus is a search engine that is purely focused on scientific information. It filters out non-scientific information, allowing you to conduct a much more focused search than you could on a general search engine like Google or DuckDuckGo.

With an index covering over 575 million items it allows users to search for journal content, but also the wider internet including web sites, course information, institutions and more.

Scirus also has a number of really useful search tools, particularly in the advanced search option, including:

• Search by subject areas, including medicine, psychology and life sciences
• Search for authors, journals or articles or other types of information
• Search by date range
• Boolean search (AND, OR, ANDNOT)
• Wildcard searching
• Automatic spellchecking of search terms
• Refine and even save your searches
• Display results by relevance or date
• Email or export your results

If you are looking on the Internet for science based information, Scirus is a great starting point...