Wednesday 24 July 2019

Library staffing 24th and 25th of July

The libraries will have some disruption to their staffing on the 24th and 25th of July.

Berrywood Library will be unstaffed from 1 pm on Wednesday the 24th of July.

The Richmond Library and Northampton General Hospital will be unstaffed from 1.30 to 4.30 on Thursday the 25th of July.



Access is available at both sites to our registered members by swiping in with your library card.

Isebrook Library will be open as usual on both days.

Apologies for any inconvenience. 

Monday 22 July 2019

Disruption to computer access 25th and 31st of July.

There will be some disruption to access to the computers in the library due to some essential maintenance work.



Thursday the 25th of July at Berrywood Library from late morning onward.

Wednesday 31st of July at the Richmond Library, Northampton General Hospital for the whole day.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused, but this is a vital security upgrade to all of our PC stock.

Tuesday 16 July 2019

What's new on Clinical Key - new clinical overviews and books added



Clinical Overviews

Clinical Overviews are a quick and easy way to find evidence-based answers to your clinical questions.

Whenever you do a search in Clinical Key if there is a topic overview it will appear as the first result and also in a box on the right of the page.

Clinical Overviews are not book or journal content; they are concise, easily scannable summaries which include evidence-based information, current guidelines, and the latest advances on medical conditions. Clinical Overviews are tailored for clinicians.

The following topics have been added in July:


Books

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


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
There is also a free app allowing you to access Clinical Key on the go.

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

Friday 5 July 2019

Health Information Week day 5: Easy Health #HIW2019

Health Information Week is a national, multi-sector campaign to promote high quality information for patients and the public. High quality health information can have a huge impact on people’s ability to stay healthy and manage illnesses effectively, giving them a better quality of life.

Our campaign this year is focused on enabling clinicians to access good quality information aimed at the public which they can recommend to patients.

We have also produced Helping you to help your patients, which is a brief guide to evaluating information as well as recommendations for sites where you can find trusted information aimed at patients.

For day 5 of Health Information Week we are looking at the Easy Health web site.

Easy Health is a valuable source of patient information leaflets and videos in an accessible and easy-read format, ideal for patients with learning disabilities or communication difficulties. 

The leaflets are produced by a range of healthcare organisations, charities, and NHS Trusts. Just click on “Health Leaflets” to browse by topic or use the search box to search.


For highly accessible information, we thoroughly recommend Easy Health.

We hope you have enjoyed our series of short items on sites that you can use to provide good quality information to your patients and the public. Please contact one of the libraries if you have any questions...

Thursday 4 July 2019

Health Information Week day 4: NICE Evidence Search #HIW2019

Health Information Week is a national, multi-sector campaign to promote high quality information for patients and the public. High quality health information can have a huge impact on people’s ability to stay healthy and manage illnesses effectively, giving them a better quality of life.

Our campaign this year is focused on enabling clinicians to access good quality information aimed at the public which they can recommend to patients.

We have also produced Helping you to help your patients, which is a brief guide to evaluating information as well as recommendations for sites where you can find trusted information aimed at patients.

For day 4 of Health Information Week we are looking at the NICE Evidence Search service.

You may be familiar with using the NICE Evidence Search site as a way to access good quality health information including guidelines, systematic reviews, articles and web sites, but you can also use it to find information aimed at the public by the use of a simple filter.

Go to the site and enter your search term



From the search results page, simply scroll down and tick the "Information for the Public" box to apply the filter



NICE Evidence Search will then give you information that has already been quality assessed that is suitable for the public.

Tomorrow for the final in our series of blogs for Health Information Week, we'll be looking at a site with lots of leaflets and videos aimed at patients...

Wednesday 3 July 2019

Health Information Week day 3: Behind the headlines #HIW2019

Health Information Week is a national, multi-sector campaign to promote high quality information for patients and the public. High quality health information can have a huge impact on people’s ability to stay healthy and manage illnesses effectively, giving them a better quality of life.

Our campaign this year is focused on enabling clinicians to access good quality information aimed at the public which they can recommend to patients.

We have also produced Helping you to help your patients, which is a brief guide to evaluating information as well as recommendations for sites where you can find trusted information aimed at patients.

For day 3 of Health Information Week we are looking at the Behind the Headlines service.

Behind the Headlines is part of the main NHS UK site and is a really useful resource that provides an unbiased, evidence based view of health stories featuring in the news headlines.

For each item featured there is an overview of the story as well as a look at the accuracy of the reporting in the media. This is followed by an appraisal of the actual research the story is based on and some commentary about what the results mean and what we can draw from that.

Behind the Headlines is a particularly useful resource for clinicians who may be faced with patients who have seen an article in a daily newspaper and want to know what it means for them.



Tomorrow for Health Information Week we'll be looking at a web site that gives you access to a huge amount of information...

Tuesday 2 July 2019

Health Information Week day 2: BMJ Best Practice #HIW2019

Health Information Week is a national, multi-sector campaign to promote high quality information for patients and the public. High quality health information can have a huge impact on people’s ability to stay healthy and manage illnesses effectively, giving them a better quality of life.

Our campaign this year is focused on enabling clinicians to access good quality information aimed at the public which they can recommend to patients.

We have also produced Helping you to help your patients, which is a brief guide to evaluating information as well as recommendations for sites where you can find trusted information aimed at patients.

For day 2 of Health Information Week we are looking at BMJ Best Practice.

BMJ Best Practice is a point of care reference tool which also includes a good selection of patient information leaflets. 

For access go to https://bestpractice.bmj.com and login with your OpenAthens account. If you don’t have an account you can register for one here: https://openathens.nice.org.uk/ 

The first time you login to the site it will prompt you to set up a personal login as well – this will be linked to your OpenAthens account and allows you to do extra things such as to install the app on a mobile device and to collect CME/CPD credits.

Once logged in you can search for a topic or browse 



If you have searched for a topic then you can go to the “Patient leaflets” section of that topic.

You can then click on the link to download the PDF: 



If you have selected the browse option from the homepage then you can browse an A-Z list of leaflets, or select to browse by specialty. All leaflets include a publication date so you can see how recently it has been updated.





















Tomorrow for Health Information Week we'll be looking at a web site to keep you up to date with research featuring in the media...

Monday 1 July 2019

Health Information Week day 1: Clinical Key #HIW2019

Health Information Week is a national, multi-sector campaign to promote high quality information for patients and the public. High quality health information can have a huge impact on people’s ability to stay healthy and manage illnesses effectively, giving them a better quality of life.

Our campaign this year is focused on enabling clinicians to access good quality information aimed at the public which they can recommend to patients and over the next 5 days we will be signposting some resources and web sites we hope you will find useful.

We have also produced Helping you to help your patients, which is a brief guide to evaluating information as well as recommendations for sites where you can find trusted information aimed at patients.

For day 1 of Health Information Week we are looking at Clinical Key.

Clinical Key is a fantastic resource and many of our users will be familiar with the high quality content it contains such as the Lancet journal series, electronic books and topic pages, but did you know it also contains a wide selection of information sheets in a variety of languages that are specifically tailored to patients?

To access them go to www.clinicalkey.com and login with your OpenAthens account. If you don’t have an account you can register for one here: https://openathens.nice.org.uk/

Once you’re logged in you can click to browse patient education topics or to search, select “Patient Ed.” From the list of resource types and type in your search terms:


From your search results you can browse the contents to find the most useful information for your patient. Click on a result for more information.



Once you’ve chosen click on the option to print, and it will create a printable PDF for you. You can choose your language (if available). You can also add your name and contact details for your patient.
Clinical Key is a great all round resource that can support both you and you patients, from complex clinical information through to videos, topic pages and patient education sheets.

Tomorrow for Health Information Week we'll be looking at another really useful resource for supporting patients.