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...

Web site of the month: NIHR Search Signals

NIHR Search Signals

Designed to make important research evidence easily accessible to clinicians, practitioners and managers, the NHS National Institute for Health Research have set up a service called Search Signals as part of their Dissemination Centre Portal.

Each week they publish three or four new ‘Signals’ – short summaries of health research that have appeared recently in peer-reviewed journals.

This is a free, open access site and is fully searchable. Anyone can sign up on the website to receive a monthly update of all Signals that are published, or choose to receive Signals in particular categories.There is also an RSS feed available.

This summer the Dissemination Centre launched a new product: ‘My Signals’, which gives different readers’ personal perspectives on research published in the Signals format. The latest of these has been selected by two surgeons.

Search Signals is a great way to keep up to date with short summaries of the latest evidence and expert commentary.  Highly recommended.

To sleep perchance... New blog on sleep research.

Interested in the latest research on sleep and sleeplessness? There is a brand new blog covering just this topic.

The Sleep Bulletin is produced by the Joint Education & Training library at Mid Cheshire Hospitals and will feature research articles around this topic. There isn't huge amounts of content on the blog yet but it will grow over time and is well worth a look if you have a professional (or personal) interest in sleep and insomnia.

Web site of the month: Jane (Journal Author Name Estimator)

Have you been conducting research or written a paper but have no idea where to get it published? Jane can help.

Jane, or to give the site its full name, Journal/Author Name Estimator, is an easy to use tool that can find journals that publish the sort of content you have written about.

http://jane.biosemantics.org/

Simply enter the title or abstract from your work (you can also search by keywords) into the search box and Jane will compare your text with the millions of articles indexed in Medline and recommend the journals which best match your area of interest.

Not only that, you can also use Jane to find relevant articles to cite in your paper by doing the same thing. You can also search for authors who's work best matches your area of interest.

Jane does not retain the information you supply for longer than it needs it to return a list of results. If you are worried about protecting your work there is also a scramble button. This arranges your content into alphabetical order, rendering it very hard to read for anyone else trying to intercept it, but making no difference to the search functionality.

Jane is a simple, versatile tool that is really helpful for those considering writing an article for publication, as well as those looking for a publisher.

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.

Web site of the month: Understanding health research A tool for making sense of health studies

Understanding Health Research is a tool designed to help you understand and review published health research to decide how dependable and relevant a piece of research is.

www.understandinghealthresearch.org

The tool, using a series of questions about the study, allows you to examine specific types of research, and helps you to understand what the answers to those questions mean for the quality of the research.

Once you have been through the questions, you can add any notes you wish and save (or email) the outcome as a .PDF document which lists all the responses to the questions.

The site also features other useful critical appraisal resources including a useful information section which includes a basic introduction to the scientific concepts involves (e.g. sampling and populations, sources of bias or correlation and causation). There are also links to other critical appraisal tools and research that has already been appraised, as well as to other sites to help you better understand scientific research.

Understanding Health Research is a really useful site allowing you to make a quick assessment of the quality of a piece research (even if you do not know much about critical appraisal) as well as providing other critical appraisal resources. Very highly recommended.

The Researcher

Available online now

The Researcher is an open access (i.e. free) online magazine, produced by, and aimed at the research community in the NHS. It is published by Health Education England, the NHS National Institute for Health Research and the North West R&D team.

The first issue features articles on

• careers in health research
• the benefits to your career of being a research participant 
• an "agony aunt" answering research questions
• what it is like to be a researcher
• and more

For anyone interested in health care research, this title is well worth a look

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. 

Web site (sort of) of the month: ScHARR Research Hacks

Not strictly speaking a web site, this is a playlist of videos on YouTube from the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield.

The videos are all short (mostly around 1 minute) and feature a range of useful tools to enable researchers (or anyone else) to better able to find and share information as well as tips on collaborating.

The topics covered include using Google Drive and Netvibes, making a podcast, having an online meeting, Google Scholar and many more.

You can also download all the videos via iTunes.

For anyone interested in research or collaborative working, we think this is a really useful resource.

Web site of the month: NHS Horizon Scanning Centre

The Horizon Scanning Centre is part of the NHS National Institute for Health Research and is based  at the School of Health, University of Birmingham.

The HSC's role is around providing information on emerging technologies that could have a significant impact on patients or on the way NHS services in the near future.

The HSC covers

• Drugs & pharmaceuticals
• Advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMP)
• Therapeutic (not childhood) vaccines, 
• Medical devices and equipment
• Diagnostic and predictive tests and procedures
• Rehabilitation aids and therapy

The Centre produces a number of briefings and reports which you can view by specialty. Each specialty includes drug, diagnostic and device briefings, as well as other reports. All are available to download.

The specialties available include:

• Anaesthetics
• Cancer & palliative care
• Cardiovascular disease & surgery
• Mental health
• Paediatrics and neonatology
• ...and many more

You can also find open access journal articles on the site which HSC staff have published, and again they are freely available to download.

Finally you can also sign up to  receive an email bulletin that contains the latest news, briefings and reports, which is an ideal way to keep an eye on the technology around the corner (you can also follow them on Twitter).

The Horizon Scanning Centre is a really useful way to keep up to date with the evaluation of emerging technologies and their likely impact on the NHS.

November Eyes on Evidence from NICE

Eyes on Evidence is a free monthly bulletin from NICE Evidence Services  which reviews significant new evidence as it emerges and what this may mean for current practice.

In the November issue you can find:

• Bias reporting of randomised controlled trials in breast cancer
• Prevention and treatment of pressure ulcers
• Intermittent pneumatic compression for deep vein thrombosis in patients with stroke
• Passive smoking and meningococcal disease in children and young people
• Minimally invasive surgery for gastro-oesophogeal reflux disease 
• Evidence update on urinary tract infections in children 

You can find all the previous issues of Eyes on Evidence and subscribe by email on the NICE Evidence Services site.

Updated study shows the value of medical libraries

A study published in the Journal of the Medical Library Association shows the impact medical libraries can have on patient care. 

"The value of library and information services in patient care"* reported that 3/4s of 16,122 survey respondents (a variety of clinicians) said that as a result of using information from a library they had definitely or probably changed aspects of patient care as a result.

The changes reported included patient advice (48%), diagnosis (25%), choices of drugs or other treatment (33% and 31%). 95% said the information resulted in a better clinical decision.

The survey also showed that the use of libraries allowed clinicians to avoid adverse events including additional tests (19%), misdiagnosis (13%), adverse drug reactions or medication errors (13% and 12%) and patient mortality (6%).

Clinicians also commented on the value of having access to professional librarians who can assist with patient  care, either through the provision of evidence based literature searches, or through training in the most effective use of information resources.

* Marshall, J.G. Sollenberger,  S. Easterby-Gannett, L.K. et al, (2013) The Value of Library and Information Services in Patient Care: Results from a Multisite Study, Journal of the Medical Library Association 101(1) 38-46.  Available from www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3543128/

Eyes on Evidence - October

NHS Evidence

Eyes on Evidence is a free monthly e-bulletin from NHS Evidence which covers significant new evidence as it emerges, with an explanation about what it means for current practice.

In October's issue:

• Weight gain in people who stop smoking
• Risk of thromboembolism after interruption of warfarin treatment
• Cardiac rehabilitation in patients following myocardial infarction
• Use of cervical pessary to prevent preterm birth
• Pulse oximetry screening for critical congenital heart defects in asymptomatic newborn babies
• Evidence Updates: generalised anxiety disorder in adults and management of stable angina
• Latest news from the the NICE Accreditation Advisory Committee
• Join the NICE fellows and scholars programme

To view the latest edition, browse the archive back to 2009 or subscribe by email, visit www.evidence.nhs.uk/about-us/publications

Eyes on Evidence - August

Eyes on Evidence - August: Eyes on Evidence is a free monthly e-bulletin from NHS Evidence which covers significant new evidence as it emerges, with an explanation about what it means for current practice. The articles also contain hyperlinks to relevant articles, NHS Evidence and NICE guidance.

In this month's issue:

• Patients with sleep apnoea may have an increased risk of DVT
• Effect of enoxaparin on death rates in acute care
• Risk of venous thromboembolism with non-oral hormonal contraception
• Dehydration in hospital-admitted stroke patients
• Long-term effects on renal function of tight glycaemic control in early type 1 diabetes
• Evidence Update on nocturnal enuresis

To view the latest edition, browse the archive or subscribe by email, visit www.evidence.nhs.uk/about-us/publications

New report on chronic kidney disease in England

Kidney disease costs the NHS more than breast, lung, colon and skin cancer combined, yet too many cases remain undiagnosed and untreated, according to a report published by NHS Kidney Care.

The report, which is summarised in in the medical journal Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation has found that chronic kidney disease (CKD) costs the NHS in England more than £1.4bn each year.

This is more than the combined NHS spend on breast, lung, colon and skin cancer (£1.37 billion), according to the full-length study Chronic Kidney Disease in England: The Human and Financial Cost.
Treating kidney disease, including complications such as heart disease and stroke, swallows up £1 in every £77 spent by the NHS in England. 

As well as the report, NHS Kidney Care have published a number of resources to support the care of patients with Chronic disease, including an e-learning module (in conjunction with the RCGP) and a QOF toolkit.

Latest issue of Eyes on Evidence

Eyes on Evidence is a free monthly e-bulletin from NHS Evidence which covers significant new evidence as it emerges, with an explanation about what it means for current practice. The articles are also linked to relevant article and NICE guidance.

In this month's issue:

• Failure rates of stemmed metal-on-metal hip replacements
• The benefits of cognitive stimulation for people with dementia
• Improving support for patients with comorbidities
• Do renin-angiotensin system drugs reduce mortality in hypertension?
• Angiotensin receptor blockers for chronic heart failure
• QIPP case study for more efficient central venous access
• Cochrane quality and productivity topics
• NHS Evidence Updates on constipation in children and young people
• Free NICE British National Formulary smartphone app for NHS England

To view the latest edition, browse the archive or subscribe by email, visit www.evidence.nhs.uk/about-us/publications

GMC National Training Survey 2012

The National Training Surveys are a core part of the work that the General Medical Council carries out each year to monitor the quality of medical education and training in the UK.

The survey covers all doctors in postgraduate training and the current one had a 95% response rate.  It shows that overall, satisfaction has increased since last year’s survey and that junior doctors feel the standards of training and clinical supervision are improving.

You can read a summary of the reports key findings here.

The full report is also available on the GMC web site, along with associated documents.

2011 NHS inpatient survey results

This survey looked at the experiences of over 70,000 people who were admitted to NHS hospitals around England.

• National summary
• Historical comparisons with previous surveys
• Survey results by NHS trust
• Further information and related documents

You can find results for the local Trusts here:

• Kettering General Hospital 
• Northampton General Hospital 

The Foundation of Nusing Studies: Innovative nursing projects reports



http://www.fons.org/



FoNS have supported innovation and funded projects in nursing since 2002. They have now changed the format of their project documents and launched one page summary reports, which include key information for changing practice.

These brief overviews are available free of charge on the FoNS web site under their Dissemination Series. There are many reports available, but those from the current volume (7) include:

• meeting the needs of people with bladder problems after stroke
• promoting physical health in people with mental health needs
• working effectively with people who have learning disabilities and offending behaviour

Reports are searchable by keyword or project title.

Inside Health on BBC Radio 4

Inside Health starts on Radio 4 on Tuesday the 10th of January at 9:00 pm. Dr Mark Porter looks at conflicting health advice, explores new medical research and tackles the big health issue of the moment revealing the inner workings of the medical profession and the daily dilemmas doctors face. The series will also be available on the BBC iPlayer.