NHS Knowledge and Libraries Awareness Week 2022 #KLSNAW – Quality and Impact

Are you developing your service?

Are you updating departmental or Trust guidelines?

Involve us from the earliest steps in the process to ensure all your decisions are underpinned by evidence from research and knowledge of good practice.

Whether it’s checking that updates to national guidance are referenced in your guidelines and policies, or a full evidence search for the latest research to support departmental practices, please get in touch with us to discuss your needs:

berrywoodlibrary@nhft.nhs.uk

isebrooklibrary@nhft.nhs.uk

richmondlibrary@nhft.nhs.uk

                                                                   

 

What our users say about our evidence searching service:

 

“It has been very useful and will hopefully improve patient care and I would like to thank you all for the service you have provided, it has saved me a lot of time.”

 

“This is a vital service that is essential in the ongoing improvements in patient care, growing services and providing valuable knowledge to improve.”

“Thank you, great service and much better results than I managed to source independently.”

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.

You can now access the TRIP Pro database via OpenAthens

Previously, the Pro version of the TRIP database (which has more search features and lots of additional content) was only accessible when connected to an NHS computer, as it was IP authenticated. 

TRIP has now enabled OpenAthens access, which means you can now use TRIP Pro from anywhere if you log in with your OpenAthens account.

If you don't already have an OpenAthens account, Trust staff and students can register online here. We also have a handy short guide to registration on our website here.

If you aren't already familiar with it, TRIP is a UK clinical database designed to allow clinicians to find the best evidence to answer their clinical questions.

TRIP presents search results in a hierarchy based on the level of evidence, so you always see the highest quality information, for example, systematic reviews or metaanalysis, first (but you can sort the results by date or relevance too).

TRIP has an easy to use simple search, but TRIP Pro also offers two other ways to search in a more sophisticated way.

The advanced search option is very similar to the same feature in Google and allows you to combine search terms in different ways to find the information you want (including phrase searching, limiting by year and excluding words).

The PICO (Patient/Population Intervention Comparison Outcome) interface allows you easily break your search down into its most important elements which is really useful when answering a clinical question.

The TRIP Pro PICO search

You can find out more about the search features on TRIP here.

A great resource for finding high quality health information, TRIP is a great starting point for any literature search...

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.

Library information skills training programme 2020

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 2020 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.

So what do we offer?

Tailored and one-to-one 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
  Our most popular course! 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.

We run our workshops in a number of venues across the county:

• Berrywood Hospital
• Danetre Hospital in Daventry
• Northampton General Hospital
• St Mary's Hospital in Kettering.

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.

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.

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).

New Cochrane Library website preview

The Cochrane Library, home of the Database of Systematic Reviews is relaunching its website. In advance of the final version, a preview site is currently available for viewing.

The preview site is fully functional (although you will not be able to save any searches), so you can have a look at the new enhancements on the site and even give Wiley feedback on the changes or any problems you may encounter.

https://betacochranelibrary.com/

TRIP Pro access extended for NHS staff in England

Health Education England have renewed the subscription for the premium version of TRIP until the end of March 2019.

If you aren't already familiar with it, TRIP is a UK clinical database designed to allow clinicians to find the best evidence to answer their clinical questions.

TRIP presents search results in a hierarchy based on the level of evidence, so you always see the highest quality information, for example, systematic reviews or metaanalysis, first (but you can sort the results by date or relevance too).

TRIP has an easy to use simple search, but TRIP Pro also offers two other ways to search in a more sophisticated way.

The advanced search option is very similar to the same feature in Google and allows you to combine search terms in different ways to find the information you want (including phrase searching, limiting by year and excluding words).

The PICO (Patient/Population Intervention Comparison Outcome) interface allows you easily break your search down into its most important elements which is really useful when answering a clinical question.

TRIP Pro is only accessible from an NHS computer (via its IP address). When accessing the site you should see the message about your account being provided by Health Education England as below.

TRIP is still accessible for free outside of the NHS, but with more limited search functionality.

A great resource for finding high quality health information, TRIP is a great starting point for any literature search...

Web site of the month: Twitter. A guide to searching for research purposes

As it has become ubiquitous, social media is a useful source of information, but how do you get the most from it when looking for information?

Produced by an NHS Librarian from the North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust and hosted on the NHS Networks site, this short guide looks at using Twitter as a source of reference and for research purposes.

The guide takes you through the different kinds of content you can find on Twitter and the tools you can use to organise your Twitter account and some techniques to make the best of them.

The guide also includes tips of how to best search Twitter to find the information you need, including using the advanced search options.

Finally it also shows you how to cite a Tweet if you need to include it in your bibliography.

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.

Calling all nurses & AHPs - help needed with a database trial

Health Education England have organised a trial of the Ovid EMcare database as part of the plan to re-procure the NHS national core content (electronic journals and databases available to all NHS staff in England) in 2019.

Depending on the results of the trial HEE may decide to procure EMcare along side, or instead of, the CINHAL database currently available.

EMCare holds over 3,700 full text journals covering nursing and allied health topics. This includes 1,800 titles not currently available in other databases (you can find a short introductory video here and a full list of all the journals on the database here).

For the trial HEE are particularly interested in the database interface and how easy you find it to search (the full text content is not actually accessible).

To access the EMcare trial go to http://demo.ovid.com/demo/lp/emcare_nhs/ You will need your OpenAthens password to log in.

To complete a short (6 questions) feedback survey on EMcare go to: https://healtheducationyh.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/emcaretrialsurvey

The trial is available now and runs until the 29th of January 2018.

New citation export function in Clinical Key

Clinical Key has a new export citation feature. This will enable you to make better use of your search results by selecting and exporting references, allowing you to store, organise and share them.

Researchers who often develop their own database of citations may find this new feature particularly useful.

When you have searched Clinical Key you will find the citation export icon against each reference.



You can then export you citation(s) from Clinical Key in several different formats and you can chose to include abstracts or just the bibliographic reference. Formats available from Clinical Key are:

• RIS for End Note, Reference Manager, Procite and Menderley
• BibTeX for Menderley
• Text

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.

Web site of the month: ONESearch

ONESearch from the US National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR) is a simple search interface giving you access to a number of different resources aimed at researchers.

Using ONESearch gives you a single point of entry to:

• Health Services Research Projects in Progress - covering ongoing health services research and public health projects
• Health Services and Sciences Research Resources - health services and public health research, data sets, instruments and software
• Health Services Research Information Central - links to high-quality news, data/tools/methods and grey literature aimed at the health services research community
• Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce - public health resources

ONESearch uses the standard searching options (Boolean operators, phrase searching etc.) you may already be familiar with. It also allows you to filter your results by each of the resources above and then further by topic areas.

www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/onesearch.html

ONESearch is a really useful resource for finding ongoing and unpublished research, grey literature as well as public health related material.

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.