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.