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...

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...

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...

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...

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.