Christmas shopping on Amazon? Find out how you can help the library.

Click the link!

If you are doing some or all of your Christmas shopping on Amazon, you can help support the Library Service at no cost to yourself. It's as simple as clicking a link.

By clicking on the "buy it now" link in our catalogue, on our web site or from this blog, a percentage of the price of anything you buy will come to us, all at no additional cost to you.

It doesn't matter if you are buying books, a blu-ray box set, music, a Christmas jumper, a laptop, scented candles or reindeer food. If you click our link the Library Service will get a cut.

The ID will stay on your computer for 24 hours, so anything you purchase from Amazon in that time will automatically be included.

"What's the catch?" you may ask. There isn't one.

Clicking on the link doesn't change what you pay to Amazon, and we can't see what you have bought.

Clicking the link just means we get some money back which we can then invest in the library service to help make what we do go a little further.

So please, if you are going to be shopping with Amazon this Christmas, help us at the same time and use our Buy It Now link to send a little of Amazon's profits our way.

Library opening Wednesday 23rd and Friday 25th of November

Photo courtesy of  Stavos on Flickr

On Wednesday the 23rd Isebrook Library will be closed from 12.30 for the afternoon.

Due to staff fire training on Friday the 25th of November:

• The Richmond Library will open at 10.00 am 
• Isebrook Library at 10.30 am

Berrywood Library is open as usual on both days.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Library information skills training programme 2017

"Just precisely what is a P value"?

Need to find information to support your clinical practice? Need to make a decision but can't find the supporting evidence? Starting a course but can't find the study material? Found the evidence but unsure what it means? Going through nursing re-validation? We can help.

All of our training programme dates for 2017 are now available on the Library's web site.

Our courses are free to access for staff and attached students from Northamptonshire Healthcare and Northampton General Hospital.

They are aimed at both clinicians and managers who want to be able to find and use the best possible evidence to support their decision making.

The courses run at a variety of locations including the Berrywood and Northampton General hospitals, as well as Bevan House in Kettering.

So what do we offer?

• PreCourse Course
  If you are returning to study, or starting a formal academic programme for the first time, our PreCourse Course may be just what you need. This three hour workshop is designed to give you the information skills you need to make you studies that bit easier. The session cover things like finding the material on your reading lists, using databases and how to identify good quality information. It also covers searching for evidence and guidelines and how to access electronic journals. Everything you should need to get you started.

• Literature Searching
  If you need to access primary research, our literature searching course may be the answer.  This will enable you to effectively search a number of databases such as Medline, HMIC (healthcare management) or the British Nursing Index through the NHS's HDAS interface. We'll show you how to search, save your results and even access full text journal articles, straight from the databases.

• Critical Appraisal Skills
  Once you have found the evidence, you need to know what it means and if you can rely on it, and that is where our critical appraisal skills sessions come in.Our Introduction to Critical Appraisal workshop will take you through the statistics, terminology and process, while our highly interactive Critical Appraisal in Action session gives you the opportunity to appraise a research article in a group facilitated by one of our librarians.

"3 hours of CPD & a reflective
 account you say?"

• Evidence into Practice
  If you are a nurse undergoing revalidation, try our Evidence into Practice course. It offers the opportunity to refresh (or learn) your skills in searching for the latest evidence, while finding information that is relevant to your day to day work.Come to the course with a question related to your scope of practice and go away not only with updated skills, but also with evidence to feed back in to your department. You will log 2 hours and 30 minutes of CPD time and at the end of the session will complete one of the 5 reflective accounts required by the NMC for revalidation, based on what you have learned.

As well as our published workshops, we can also create tailored sessions for you team or department, and we can always do a one to one session if you can't make any of our published dates, and we can even come to you.

Finally, if face to face training is not your thing, or you just want a little help, we have a selection of videos on our YouTube channel that can help you with getting to grips with some of these skills.

New books added to Clinical Key

Elsevier have added new electronic books to Clinical Key this month, including:

• Auerbach’s Wilderness Medicine (Auerbach, Paul) 7th ed
• Campbell’s Operative Orthopaedics (Azar, Frederick) 13th ed
• Flaps and Reconstructive Surgery (Wei, Fu-Chan) 2nd ed
• Movement Disorders in Childhood (Singer, Harvey) 2nd ed
• Rockwood and Matsen’s The Shoulder (Rockwood, Charles) 5th ed
• Video Atlas of Neurosurgery: Contemporary Tumor and Skull Base Surgery (Quinones-Hinojosa, Alfredo) 1st ed; New to CK; 

Clinical Key is a fantastic, easy to use resource that contains huge amounts of full text content including:

• 1,400 topic pages
• Over 600 electronic journals 
• Over 1000 electronic books
• 850 First Consult monographs
• 17,000 + medical / surgical videos
• 300 + Procedures Consult videos
• 15,000 patient education handouts
• 2.2 million images
• You can find a full content list here

To access Clinical Key all you need is your OpenAthens password (register online here if you don't have one) to get started.

Development Day Friday 18th of November at Berrywood Hospital

We are involved in the development day being held on the 18th of November by the Pre/Post and Non-Registered Team for all nursing, allied health registered and non-registered staff. 

The event will be held across all meeting rooms and the library at Berrywood Hospital, Northampton with various development workshops and activities available throughout the day. 

Ongoing through the day:

• De‐fib ‐ Mouth Care
• Vena Puncture ‐ Elimination Assessment
• IV ‐ NMC Revalidation
• Catheterisation ‐ Portfolio Building
• Wound Care ‐ Mentor Support
• Diabetes Foot ‐ Research

Sessions:

• Coaching Skills
• Using OpenAthens/accessing databases/courses
• Introduction to library facilities: membership/catalogue/articles
• Communication Skills

Advice will also be on hand for Learning Beyond Registration, mentorship, NMC revalidation and creating and maintaining professional development portfolios for non-registered staff.

There’s no need to book on, just turn up to one of the sessions: 

• 10am to 10.30am 
• 10.45am to 11.15am 
• 11.30am to 12noon
• 12.30pm to 1pm 
• 1.30pm to 2pm 

Medical Masterclass - now available as an app

Medical Masterclass is a learning package designed to help trainee physicians as well as and doctors undertaking the MRCP.

We have had a subscription to the web site for some time, but the Royal College of Physicians has now produced a rather nifty app as another way to access this revision package.

Available for both Android and iOS (Apple) devices, the app is a well designed, easy to use way of accessing all the content from Medical Masterclass. It also tracks your performance as you go through revision questions, giving you a good idea of how you are performing.

The app itself is free, but to set up an account on Medical Masterclass you will need to contact the Richmond Library to obtain a user name and password to access the content.

If you are a doctor in training, undertaking the MRCP or just wanting to test your medical knowledge, Medical Masterclass is a good starting point and the new app has just made it even easier to access.

Want to help us with some early Christmas shopping? We have some new approval books.

We have a new set of books on approval.

The scheme gives you the chance to browse a selection of newly published titles covering a variety of health and related topics and let us know if there are any you would like us to buy for the Library's collection. Like picking a present everyone can share!

Our current selections are available at the Berrywood and Richmond libraries until the 16th of December. The topics covered include:

• Autism
• Dermatology
• Medicine
• Mental health, psychiatry and psychology
• Nursing
• Palliative care
• Paediatrics
• ...and 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 our catalogue.