Bidding farewell to HDAS and the NICE Evidence Search

As you are probably aware, NICE have taken the decision to close down both the Healthcare Databases Advance Search (HDAS) and the Evidence Search services as of the 31st of March 2022.

HDAS has been a key fixture of database searching for many years, allowing access to all the available databases through a single interface.

For more on the closure of HDAS, NICE has a page which includes information on how to export your saved searches.

From the 1st of April users will need to search using the different interfaces provided by the database suppliers. All of the databases you could previously search in HDAS are easily accessible via the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub with an OpenAthens password.

We have developed a user guide for each of the interfaces which you can find below:

• EBSCO interface for CINAHL
• OVID interface for Medline, Embase, Emcare, AMED, Social Policy & Practice, and HMIC
• ProQuest Interface for PsycInfo

We are also offering training to support users in making the transition to the new interfaces. Contact us if you would like to have some help with searching.

At the same time NICE are also closing their Evidence Search service. Sadly there is not a direct replacement for this, but the TRIP database is similar and well worth a look. You can also find some of the same content via the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub.

If you have any questions or need any help, please contact one of the libraries.

All library training cancelled

Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (of which Library Services is a part) has decided that all training should be cancelled until at least the end of June as part of their response to the COVID-19 situation.

We are sorry that we can no longer provide this training but there are some online alternatives that you could use.

Health Education England have provided an online course in planning a search and using the Healthcare Databases (HDAS) to carry it out. You can do the training without logging in but if you do it will not record your progress. If you wish to log in you can use an NHS OpenAthens account.

You will also need an OpenAthens account to use the NHS databases for searching for journal articles (module 7). If you do not have one you can register from here. If you already have an account but have problems with it please contact the library.

Once on the HDAS site there is more help available from these 2 pages: https://hdas.nice.org.uk/help/ and https://www.nice.org.uk/about/nice-communities/library-and-knowledge-services-staff/training-materials (which includes links to help videos on YouTube).

If you need a work-related literature search done then you can also contact the library and ask us to do that for you.

There is an online tutorial on critical appraisal. This covers RCTs, systematic reviews and economic evaluations and in each case there is a tutorial and a paper that you can download to appraise and then check your answers against the ones on the site.

The Understanding Health Research site also has a tool which guides you through a series of questions to help you to review and interpret a published health research paper.

We hope these will help, but if you have any questions regarding training, literature searching or critical appraisal, please contact one of the libraries.

New electronic journals collection available

Mark Allen Healthcare Complete

The Library Service has purchased a new collection of electronic journals for 2020.

Featuring over 65,000 articles across 26 titles, the Mark Allen Healthcare Complete collection is aimed at nurses, midwives and allied health professionals.

The titles available in the collection include:

• British Journal of Community Nursing
• British Journal of Healthcare Assistants
• British Journal of Healthcare Management
• British Journal of Mental Health Nursing
• British Journal of Midwifery
• British Journal of Nursing
• Dental Nursing
• International Journal of Palliative Nursing
• International Journal of Therapy and Rehabilitation
• Journal of Health Visiting
• Journal of Prescribing Practice (formerly Nurse Prescribing)
• + 15 others

For a full list of titles available see the MAH Collection poster online.

To access any of the individual titles from the MAH Complete collection you can:

• Go the the NICE Evidence Services Journals A-Z and search for the title you want
• Go the the Mark Allen Online Library and browse or search for titles 

You can also find links to all the MAH Complete content if you undertake a search on a topic using HDAS (the healthcare databases).

For any of these options you will need an OpenAthens password to access these (and thousands more) electronic journals. If you don't already have one you can register online for an account.

Please contact one of the libraries if you have any questions about accessing the collection. 

Allied Health Professionals Day Monday 14th October

The second annual AHPs day takes place on Monday the 14th of October.

To celebrate the library service has put together a resource guide aimed at Allied Health Professionals with a wide variety of different resources to support clinical practice, education and research.

The  guide covers a selection of the different resources the library has to support AHPs in lots of different disciplines. In it you'll find links to electronic journals, databases, books and relevant organisations.

If you are a physiotherapist, OT, podiatrist, radiographer, speech therapist or one of the many other varieties of AHP, we hope you'll find it useful.

You can find the guide on our website here: https://www.nhft.nhs.uk/download.cfm?ver=32692

Databases out of action Sunday 22nd September

NICE are conducting some essential maintenance to HDAS (Healthcare Databases Advanced Search) starting on Sunday the 22nd September starting at 7 am.

The maintenance is scheduled to run until 7 pm

During this time HDAS will not be available.




There is also some maintenance being carried out on the OpenAthens system between 7 and 9 am on Monday the 23rd. This could also potentially cause problems with access to all of our electronic resources including journal, books and databases.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Potential disruption to OpenAthens services, 6th, 7th and 15th of August

There will be some maintenance work carried out on the OpenAthens system between 7 and 9 am on the 6th, 7th and 15th of August.

During this time you could see some disruption to the service with access being intermittent or you may be unable to log in and access databases, electronic journals and ebooks.

Over 750 extra nursing and allied health electronic journals now available

In April you may recall the new National Core Content for NHS staff in England was released. Whilst we gained some great new resources such as BMJ Best Practice and the Psychology and Behavioural Sciences collection of journals, we also lost the CINAHL Plus with full text database.

When we reviewed how much Trust staff have been accessing CINAHL Plus we realised just how much the full text journal content was being used.

Consequently, we decided it is a resource we could not do without and have purchased a subscription to the database to allow staff to continue to access all the journals that were lost when the national funding was withdrawn.

You can now access all the full text journals online again, via the NICE Journals A-Z if you know the title of the journal you want (we have a handy guide on how to use it on our web site).

You can also find all the journals via a subject search using HDAS (Healthcare Databases Advanced Search) on the NICE Evidence Services site.

Of course you'll still need your OpenAthens password to access all the journals (and lots of other great resources) and you can get one here if you haven't already.

New national collection of electronic resources available from April 2019

Health Education England have now finished their re-procurement of the NHS National Core Content.

The core content is a selection of electronic resources that are purchased on behalf of all NHS staff in England and available via NHS Open Athens accounts.

Following the re-procurement some services have been withdrawn from the core content collection and others added. Most notable on the withdrawals is the decommissioning of CINAHL plus with full text, which means the loss of a large number of nursing journals online, as well as the Health Business Elite database.

The new core content selection will be available from April 2019 until March 2022 and consists of:

Point of Care tool ~new~
HEE have announced the provision of a point of care tool.

BMJ Best Practice provides summaries of evidence to support decision making in clinical practice and offers "step by step guidance on diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention is updated daily using robust evidence based methodology and expert opinion".

Databases (available via the HDAS interface):

• AMED (Allied and complementary medicine)
• British Nursing Index
• CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature)
• Embase
• Emcare ~new~
• HMIC (Health Management Information Consortium)
• Medline
• PsychInfo

Electronic journals collections (available via My Journals and HDAS)

• BMJ Publishing e-journals collection 
• Health Research Premium Collection (formerly ProQuest Hospitals Collection)
• PsychARTICLES 
• Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection ~new~

Please contact the Library Service if you have any questions about the national core content or any other of our electronic resources.

Library training programme 2019- now with new venues!

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 2019 are now available on the Library's web page.

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, evaluate and use the best possible evidence to support their decision making.

We also added two new venues for 2019, so as well as Berrywood and Northampton General Hospitals, you will also be able to access our training at Danetre Hospital in Daventry and St Mary's Hospital in Kettering.

So what do we offer?

Tailored sessions

• If you can't make one of our workshops we can arrange a one-to-one session with you, either at one of the libraries or in your place of work if it is suitable.
• We can created a tailored session for your team or department and deliver it in any suitable location. From a 10 minute update on the library service to a full three hour training session, just let us know what you need.

Our scheduled workshops

• The 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.

• 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.

If you have any questions or want to book a place on one of our workshops, you can find all the available dates and venues online or you can contact us for more information.

Apps & electronic resources drop-in session, Tuesday 18th September

Did you know the library has a number of different free apps available to give you easy access to lots of our electronic content?

Do you want to know more about accessing electronic journals, books or databases? Have you had problems with registering for an OpenAthens password? We can help.

The library is holding an all day drop-in session on Tuesday the 18th of September, in the Library, Berrywood Hospital.

Come along and find out about:

• Clinical Key app (android / Apple)
• The Library's Bookmyne app (android / Apple)
• The BNF (incorporating the BNFC) app (android / Apple)
• Royal Marsden Manual of Clincial Nursing Procedures 
• OpenAthens passwords
• Accessing electronic journals and books
• Databases

One of our professional librarians will be available all day and you can also bring along any problems or questions you may have about anything to do with making the best use of our electronic resources (or indeed anything else library-related).

There will also be refreshments available and a few freebies for you to take away too.

If you have any questions please contact the Library. We'd be 'appy to see you on the 18th (sorry)...

Advance notice - apps and eResources day, Tuesday 18th of September

We'll be holding a drop in event at Berrywood Library on Tuesday the 18th of September looking at the apps available to Trust staff and the wide selection of electronic journals, books and other resources available.

There will also be refreshments available and the odd freebie too!

More details coming soon...

New and improved nursing and allied health database available

As part of the review of the National Core Content (electronic resources provided to all NHS staff in England), Health Education England have upgraded access to one of our nursing databases for 2018-19.

Where NHS staff previously had access to CINAHL with Full Text, for the new financial year we now have CINAHL Plus with Full Text, supplied by EBSCO.

That means access to an additional 146 full text electronic journals, with CINAHL Plus offering full access to a total of 775 nursing and allied health titles with content going back to 1937.

CINAHL Plus with Full Text is available to search through the NICE HDAS interface (along with all the other databases).

You can also access specific journal titles through the Journal A-Z list. You'll just need your OpenAthens password to access both (NHS staff and attached students can register here if they don't have one).

Disruption to OpenAthens Services Tuesday 9th of January

Due to essential maintenance, there may be disruption to the OpenAthens service nationally from 7 am - 9 am (and possibly later) on Tuesday the 9th of January. 



This is to ensure OpenAthens users are protected against the recently announced security flaw identified in “virtually every modern computer, including smartphones, tablets and PCs from all vendors and running almost any operating system"

The OpenAthens self registration pages may be unavailable and there could be disruption to the Journals A-Z or HDAS (databases) and to access for services such as ClinicalKey for the duration of the maintenance.

Apologies for any inconvenience...

Web site of the month: eLfH - How to search for literature effectively

The Library Service offers regular training workshops and one-to-one sessions on literature searching, but if you have trouble making those, or just need a quick refresher, Health Education England's e-Learning for Healthcare programme can help.

There are currently three short modules on offer (each around 20 minutes in length) that give you a good introduction to the basic of literature searching:

• Module 1 Introduction to searching
• Module 2 Where do I start searching?
• Module 3 How do I start to develop a search strategy?

Each module can be used for reference or you can complete the whole thing to obtain a certificate (good for evidence of CPD!).

There are more modules currently in development, but if you want a good place to start to develop or refresh your searching skills, these modules might be just the thing.

You can also find a whole suite of videos on YouTube from NICE showing how to use the HDAS interface for searching the literature. 

Library training programme 2018

"If only I knew how to find the right evidence..."

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 2018 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, evaluate and use the best possible evidence to support their decision making.

So what do we offer?

Tailored sessions

• If you can't make one of our workshops we can arrange a one-to-one session with you, either at one of the libraries or in your place of work if it is suitable.
• We can created a tailored session for your team or department and deliver it in any suitable location. From a 10 minute update on the library service to a full three hour training session, just let us know what you need.

Our scheduled workshops

• The 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.

• Evidence into Practice

  

  "CPD time and a reflective account? Sign me up"

  
  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.

Apps & electronic resources drop-in session, 15th November

Did you know the library has a number of different free apps available to give you easy access to lots of our electronic content?

Do you want to know more about accessing electronic journals, books or databases? Have you had problems with registering for an OpenAthens password? We can help.

The library is holding a drop-in session between 12 and 2 on Wednesday the 15th of November, in Seminar Room 1, Cripps Postgraduate Centre, Northampton General Hospital.

Come along and find out about:

• UpToDate Anywhere app (android / Apple)
• ClinicalKey app (android / Apple)
• The Library's Bookmyne app (android / Apple)
• OvidToday app for accessing current issues of Ovid journals (android / Apple)
• The new BNF (incorporating the BNFC) app (android / Apple)
• Royal Marsden Manual of Clincial Nursing Procedures 
• Medical Masterclass
• OpenAthens passwords
• Accessing electronic journals and books
• Databases

You can also bring along any problems or questions you may have about anything to do with making the best use of our electronic resources (or indeed anything else library-related).

To save time (and your data!), please pre-install the app(s) you are interest in on your device and we would be happy to help you set them up during the session.

If you have any questions please contact the Library. We'd be 'appy to see you on the 15th...

A final goodbye to the old HDAS...

The Healthcare Databases Advance Search (HDAS) is the interface the NHS uses for literature searching healthcare databases such as Medline, the British Nursing Index or PsychInfo.

After extensive testing, NICE have finally decided to decommission the old version, and it will be no longer available from Friday the 3rd of March.

The good news is the newer version of HDAS is a great improvement on the old one whilst still providing access to lots of full text content. Easier to use, more intuitive and with better reliability, if you haven't already tried it out you can find it here. Like the previous version, you will need an OpenAthens account.

https://hdas.nice.org.uk/ 

There is lots of help available for using the new interface. We run training workshops on literature searching in various locations each month and can even arrange a one to one session if you can't make any of the dates.

If you can't make a training session, NICE have produced a series of short tutorial videos covering the new interface which you can find on YouTube, as well as both a quick guide and more detailed full user guide.

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.

The NHS databases are changing...

The interface we all use for searching the NHS databases such as Medline, PsychInfo or the British Nursing Index is changing.

HDAS (Healthcare Databases Advance Search) has been redeveloped by NICE with the plan to make it easier to use, more stable and reliable, and easier to update with any future technological changes.

The change over is due in October, but NICE have said they will retain the older interface "for a few weeks" to run along side the new one to give users a chance to become familiar with the new version (and to give NHS Libraries a chance to update all their training materials!)

If you have any saved searches, you will be able to migrate them into the new interface as long as they were created before the 12th of September. We would advise not creating any searches you plan to keep after this date until the new interface has gone live.

Below is a screenshot of the new interface. It brings together things that were on different screens and puts them all together on a single page. 

The HDAS interface will offer new features including the ability to export more records, more consistency and flexibility with thesaurus searching, more fields displayed in the results page and saved results that stay saved after you exit (unlike the current clipboard feature). It should also be more reliable.

We will be publicising the change over once we have a definitive date. If you would like to try out the beta version you can find it here http://beta-hdas.nice.org.uk/ (NHS OpenAthens password required)

Disruption to full text journal links, Saturday 18th - Sunday the 19th of June

Due to essential maintenance by the providers of the WorldCat Link Resolver, you may be unable to access full text journals from the NICE databases (HDAS) from 15:00 on Saturday the 18th of June to 05:00 on Sunday the 19th.