Mental health & learning disability student open day Saturday March 10th

Northamptonshire Healthcare are holding a recruitment day on Saturday the 10th of March between 10 am and 2 pm at Berrywood Hospital for mental health and learning disability students.

The library at Berrywood Hospital will be open for the duration of the event and library staff will be available to talk about the role the service plays in supporting learning and nurses in practice.

This will mean it is noisier than usual at Berrywood Library for our regular users and those wanting a quiet place to work might be better off going to the Richmond Library at Northampton General Hospital.

For more information, including how to register for the event see the Northamptonshire Healthcare web site.

A Modern Hospital: Memories of Princess Marina Hospital

Princess Marina Hospital in Northampton was one of the last NHS learning disability hospitals to be built. It was opened in 1972 and at the time was the most modern facility in the whole of Europe. The hospital finally closed in 1995.

Research carried out by the Finding Out Group (four people with learning disabilities who had research training) looked at the perspective of nursing and other staff from Northamptonshire Healthcare who worked at Princess Marina.

This is a oral history project supported by NHS nurses (many of whom worked at Princess Marina themselves) and authored by Jan Walmsley (Visiting Professor in the History of Learning Disability at the Open University).

The booklet is available for free online at the Centre for Welfare Reform or you can download a PDF here.

There is also a Power Point (download) of the findings with lots of photos on the Open University's web site. 

New collection of electronic journals available

We have bought a new collection of electronic journals. The Emerald Health and Social Care collection gives us access to over 30 titles covering topics such as mental health, learning disabilities, offending and health care management

Titles available include:

• Advances in Dual Diagnosis
• Advances in Mental Health & Intellectual Disabilities
• Clinical Governance
• International Journal of Healthcare Quality Assurance
• Journal of Adult Protection
• Journal of Forensic Practice
• Journal of Health Organisation & Management
• Journal of Integrated Care
• Leadership in Health Services
• Mental Health Review
• Tizard Learning Disability Review
• Working with Older People
• ...and many more

The journals are all available via your OpenAthens account, and you can access them via the My Journals service on the NICE Evidence Services site (you'll also find the titles appearing if you search the databases). There is a handy guide to accessing journals on our web site if you need any help. 

If you don't already have an Open Athens account you can register for one here.

Trial of mental health, learning disabilities and social care electronic journals

E-Journals

We are running a three-month trial of the Emerald Health and Social Care e-journals collection. This collection includes 22 journals covering the fields of mental health, learning disabilities, forensic psychology and vulnerable groups, with titles including:

-         Advances in Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities

-         Ethnicity and Inequality in Health and Social Care

-         Journal of Adult Protection

-         Journal of Criminal Psychology

-         Journal of Mental Health Training, Education and Practice

-         Mental Health and Social Inclusion

-         Quality in Ageing and Older Adults

-         Tizard Learning Disability Review

A complete list of titles included is available via the Emerald website.

The journals are available for you to access now via our Emerald page.  You will need an Athens username and password – click on “Login” on the top left of the screen, and then click on “Athens login”. Once you are logged in you will see a complete list of our subscriptions including the Health and Social Care Collection at the end of the list.

As well as being accessible via Emerald, you will also find these journals when you search My Journals or the healthcare databases via NHS Evidence (again, you will need an Athens account for this).

If you don’t already have an Athens account you can register for one via the Athens self-registration page. If you’d like any help with registering for Athens or accessing the journals online, please get in touch with us. There are also user guides available for the Emerald site, and for accessing e-journals.

We’d like to know what you think of this new collection and whether it is something that you would like us to subscribe to. Please contact us with your feedback!

GMC launches new online resource for doctors on treating patients with learning disabilities

Most doctors believe that patients with a learning disability receive poorer care than rest of the population, according to a poll commissioned by the General Medical Council.

The poll also showed that doctors would like a source of good quality practical advice on treating people with learning disabilities and as a result of that the GMC has launched an extensive new online resource. The site aims to help doctors provide better care for people with learning disabilities by providing interactive learning and:

• identifying the key issue in providing better quality care
• highlighting patient perspectives on the care they want to receive
• showing how to put GMC guidance into practice. 

 You can find the site here: http://www.gmc-uk.org/learningdisabilities

WELD – Working with Evidence about Learning Disabilities

The WELD blog aims to bring you the latest learning disabilities evidence that is published each week. They scan a wide variety of websites, databases and journals and select evidence that is relevant to health and social care professionals with an interest in learning disabilities.

The daily posts include summarised published evidence, policy guidance, reports and links to primary sources. The site is fully searchable and also offers RSS feeds of both entries and comments made by users.

You can find it at: http://www.weldblog.net/