Co-morbidities manager tool added to BMJ Best Practice

Health Education England (HEE) has extended their national subscription to BMJ Best Practice to include the Comorbidities Manager for all NHS staff and learners in England.

In the UK alone, one in three patients admitted to hospital as an emergency has five or more conditions. This poses a significant problem for healthcare systems. Clinical guidelines only focus on single conditions, but failure to treat the whole patient leads to worse clinical outcomes, and longer lengths of stay. The COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the problem, with over 60% of patients admitted to intensive care units having comorbidities.

The BMJ Best Practice Comorbidities Manager supports the management of the whole patient by including guidance on the treatment of a patient’s acute condition alongside their pre-existing comorbidities.

BMJ Best Practice is a practical tool to help clinicians meet the changing and more complex needs of patients and maximise NHS resources, together resulting in better care for patients.

Available on desktop or app, 24/7 on and offline, NHS staff and learners in England can use BMJ Best Practice for free via an NHS OpenAthens account. Find out more at bmj.com/hee or watch the short video.

NHFT virtual book club - our next read is The Woman in Black

Following our visit to California and Wyoming in the terrific We Begin at the End, things have taken a darker turn. With Halloween almost upon us, for our 20th meeting we will be reading Susan's Hill's classic ghost story, The Woman in Black.

Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House. The house stands at the end of a causeway, wreathed in fog and mystery, but it is not until he glimpses a wasted young woman, dressed all in black, at the funeral, that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk of the woman in black - and her terrible purpose.

Spending time in Eel Marsh House to settle Alice Drablow's affairs reveals a lot more than correspondence and paperwork. What are the terrifying sounds on the marsh? Who is the woman in black? All will be revealed... 😱

The next meeting will be Thursday the 24th of November at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room. Come if you dare. 

Access reading lists on our catalogue

We have begun adding reading lists to our library catalogue to make it easier for students and staff undertaking courses to find the books they need.

You can find the link on the left hand menu of the catalogue as pictured above.

The reading lists currently featured are from the University of Northampton nursing courses and medicine at the University of Leicester, as well as the nurse prescriber course.

We hope you find it useful.

An updated reading list for Black History Month

October is Black History Month and a couple of years ago we developed a reading list in support of it. We've now updated the list, adding new titles, and these are available for staff and students in Northamptonshire Healthcare and Northampton General Hospital to borrow from the libraries.

The list covers race and racism, fiction from black authors, nonfiction titles from our leisure reading collection, as well as organisational and health care related books.

On the list you'll find titles like "The uncomfortable truth about racism", "Overcoming everyday racism" and David Olusoga's "Black and British: a forgotten history" as well as fiction from black authors like Marlon James and Akwaeke Emezi (writer of the excellent "Freshwater"). 

There are also biographies, like those of Walter Tull and Michelle Obama as well as classics like "The Colour Purple", "Beloved" and "If Beale Street Could Talk", books on cookery, and more clinically focused titles. We hope there is something for everyone on the list.

You can find the reading list on our catalogue here.