Web site of the month: Cochrane Clinical Answers

NHS staff now have access to a new resource, Cochrane Clinical Answers. Covering 32 different clinical specialities, it provides short, readable, clinically focused access to the high quality research from the Cochrane Library. Each question is designed to be clinically relevant, aiming to inform decision making at the point of care.

Each clinical answer contains a clinical question, a short answer and the ability to look deeper into the evidence from Cochrane reviews, displayed in a user friendly format. You can browse all the answers by broad topic areas, or search for more specific information.

Cochrane Clinical Answers is aimed at healthcare professionals and is a very useful resource for obtaining short, actionable evidence that can be used in clinical practice. 

ProQuest Hospitals Collection - change of name

We have just been informed the ProQuest Hospitals Collection will be changing its name on the 1st of June to the Hospital Premium Collection.

Part of the NHS's national core content, ProQuest is an extensive health and care resource which also has a lot of full text journal content. It is made up of a number of databases:

• Health and Medical Complete - offers in-depth coverage from leading biomedical publications
• Nursing & Allied Health Source - provides reliable health care information covering nursing, allied health, alternative and complementary medicine, and much more
• Health Management - relevant resources for anyone interested in the business of running a health organization
• Psychology Journals - key information from leading psychology and psychosomatic publications
• Family Health - covers a vast array of subjects for patients and their families from sports injuries to women's health, from food and nutrition to midwifery, from eye care to dentistry

With both simple and advanced searching options, the (soon to be called) Hospital Premium Collection is a useful source of good quality evidence based information.

Spring bank holiday closure

All the libraries will be unstaffed on Monday the 30th of May for the bank holiday

The Garden of the Tuileries on a Spring Morning
courtesy of the Met Museum

24 hour access is available as usual to our registered members by swiping in using your library card at the Berrywood and Richmond libraries.

We reopen as normal on Tuesday the 31st at all of our sites.

OpenAthens - what it's for and why you need an account

An OpenAthens account is your gateway to a huge volume of health care related resources. Having one will provide you with access to the latest evidence to support your practice including:

• Clinical Key - a large collection of high quality electronic books and journals (including all of the Lancet titles) with a simple to use, Google style search interface
• Databases such as Medline, the British Nursing Index, PsychInfo and HMIC (healthcare management) where you can search by topic and find many full text journal articles
• Packages such as PsychArts and the ProQuest Hospitals Collection (all full text)
• A large array of electronic journal titles covering all aspects of health and care
• Royal Marsden Manual of Clinical Nursing Procedures
• BNF/BNFC apps

Once you have your account you can use all these resources from work, from home, from anywhere you can get onto the Internet with any sort of device, PC, laptop, tablet, or smartphone, providing you with instant access to the evidence.

OpenAthens is a vital resource to support your work and practice and to make it even easier for you, we have added a new video to our YouTube channel showing you exactly how easy it is to register for an account. If you don't have one why not get registered and see just how useful it can be?

Changes to Clinical Key

Clinical Key has proved to be a highly popular resource with a lot of staff making use of the large volume of high quality content available through it, so we have renewed our subscription for 2016-17.

Elsevier have made some changes to the way the search filters on Clinical Key work.

Instead of appearing at the top of the page once you have searched, the filters now appear on the left hand side of the page (which will be more familiar to anyone who has used our catalogue, or indeed, shopped at Amazon).

The filters allow you to select full text journal articles, books, images etc. (or combinations there of) to find the information you want. You can also limit by study type, medical speciality or by date.

Elsevier have also added new electronic journals and books to Clinical Key this month, including:

Journals

• Journal of Orthopaedic Science  (1996 to present)
• Urology Case Reports (2013 to present)

Books

• Dermatological Signs of Systemic Disease (Callen, Jeffrey) 5th ed; 
• Emergency Radiology: The Requisites (Soto, Jorge) 2nd ed; 
• Essential Surgical Procedures (Elsevier) 1st ed; New to CK; 
Henry’s Clinical Diagnosis and Management by Laboratory Methods (McPherson, Richard) 23rd ed
• Neurology Secrets (Kass, Joseph S.) 6th ed;
• Ob/Gyn Secrets (Mularz, Amanda) 4th ed; New to CK;
• Video Atlas of Oculofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (Korn, Bobby) 2nd ed

Clinical Key is a fantastic, easy to use resource that contains huge amounts of full text content including:

• 1,400 topic pages
• Over 600 electronic journals 
• Over 1000 electronic books
• 850 First Consult monographs
• 17,000 + medical / surgical videos
• 300 + Procedures Consult videos
• 15,000 patient education handouts
• 2.2 million images
• You can find a full content list here

To access Clinical Key all you need is your OpenAthens password (register online here if you don't have one) to get started.

May 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 might mean for current practice.

In the May issue you can find:

• Surgery versus medical therapy in ulcerative colitis
• Self-monitoring for people on vitamin K antagonist anticoagulant therapy
• Shared decision-making: antibiotic use for acute respiratory infections
• Previous pregnancies in young women having an abortion
• Mental health of carers after bereavement

Evidence summaries from NICE’s Medicines and Prescribing Programme:

• Chronic wounds: advanced wound dressings and antimicrobial dressings
• Moderate to severe acute post-operative pain: sufentanil sublingual tablet system 
• Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and young people: guanfacine prolonged-release 
• Adverse events associated with off-label medicine use in adults
• Myocardial infarction: risks and benefits of extended dual antiplatelet therapy

You can find subscribe to receive the bulletin by email on the NICE Evidence Services site.

Web site of the month: Better Health

Produced by the Race Equality Foundation, the Better Health web site provides access to a selection of evidence-based information to support healthcare staff promote race equality and tackle discrimination in the workplace.

www.better-health.org.uk/

The full text of the evidence-based Better Health Briefing Papers, academic papers, web resources and examples of good practice of interventions to overcome barriers and promote race equality are included on the site.

Resources available include toolkits and guidance, videos, presentations, policy papers and more.

It is possible to register to receive a regular monthly newsletter or re-visit to view news, events or contribute to the forum discussions.

May Day bank holiday closure

All the libraries will be unstaffed on Monday the 2nd of May for the bank holiday

24 hour access is available as usual to our registered members by swiping in using your library card at the Berrywood and Richmond libraries.

We reopen as normal on Tuesday the 3rd at all of our sites.

Northampton General Hospital: The early years

The Historical Archive at Northampton General have produced a booklet on the early history of the hospital.

Starting with its foundation in 1743, the booklet traces the history of the hospital from its inception as an infirmary to the foundation of the NHS in 1948.

As well as being available in the Richmond Library, the booklet is available from the Historical Archive (priced just £3.50).

For more information contact the archive on 01604 544868 or email historicalarchive@ngh.nhs.uk

Web site of the month: Daily Health News

Do you struggle to keep up with the volume of health related news? Want to stay current with policies, reports, publications, events and media coverage?

It's hard to know where to look, with so many different sources of information out there, but we can help.

Our Daily Health News service scans feeds from over 60 different sources every day. We look through them and the ones we think you will find most useful are then posted onto our Blogger site, giving you just one place to look if you want to find out what is new in health and the NHS.

We don't include a lot of clinical items (you can find more of that via our Twitter account). Our feeds include:

• Local media coverage of Northamptonshire health issues
• NHS, DoH and other government sites
• Think tanks like the King's Fund and Health Foundation
• Royal Colleges
• Voluntary groups and charities
• Health related news sites like OnMedica
• Mainstream media sites like the BBC, and newspapers including the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian

You can access this service in a number of different ways:

• Visit the web site
• Subscribe to our RSS feed (you can find it here)
• Most conveniently - you can subscribe to the service by email and receive one message a day with a digest of all the news, complete with links to take you straight to the item. Simply enter your email address here and you will be sent a confirmation email. Once you have clicked on the link in the email your subscription will be live. We will never use your email address for anything else or share it with anyone, and you can unsubscribe from the service at any time.

Our Daily Health News Service is an easy way to keep up to date with the issues facing the NHS and health care and we hope you will find it useful...

Easter opening

Happy Easter courtesy of
the Met Museum 

All the Libraries will be unstaffed on Friday the 25th and Monday the 28th of March for the Easter holiday.

24 hour access will be available as usual to registered members over the Easter period via our swipe card system at the Berrywood and Richmond Libraries.

Isebrook Library will be closed over the bank holiday.

We reopen as normal on Tuesday the 29th at all of our sites.

Library training: Evidence into Practice: a CPD opportunity for nurses undertaking revalidation

This course offers the opportunity to refresh 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 3 hours 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.

The course will be running on the following dates in the Rowan Room at Berrywood Hospital:

• Monday 16th May 1.30-4.30
• Thursday 16th June 9.30-12.30
• Tuesday 12th July 1.30-4.30
• Thursday 18th August 1.30-4.30
• Tuesday 20th September 9.30-12.30

Please contact any of our libraries to book a place or for more information:

• Berrywood Library: berrywoodlibrary@nhft.nhs.uk / 01604 682650
• Isebrook Library: isebrooklibrary@nhft.nhs.uk / 01933 235862
• Richmond Library, Northampton General Hospital: richmondlibrary@nhft.nhs.uk / 01604 545929