Health Information Week day 4: NICE Evidence Search #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 4 of Health Information Week we are looking at the NICE Evidence Search service.

You may be familiar with using the NICE Evidence Search site as a way to access good quality health information including guidelines, systematic reviews, articles and web sites, but you can also use it to find information aimed at the public by the use of a simple filter.

Go to the site and enter your search term

From the search results page, simply scroll down and tick the "Information for the Public" box to apply the filter ↓

NICE Evidence Search will then give you information that has already been quality assessed that is suitable for the public.

Tomorrow for the final in our series of blogs for Health Information Week, we'll be looking at a site with lots of leaflets and videos aimed at patients...

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...

Health Information Week day 2: BMJ Best Practice #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 2 of Health Information Week we are looking at BMJ Best Practice.

BMJ Best Practice is a point of care reference tool which also includes a good selection of patient information leaflets. 

For access go to https://bestpractice.bmj.com and login with your OpenAthens account. If you don’t have an account you can register for one here: https://openathens.nice.org.uk/ 

The first time you login to the site it will prompt you to set up a personal login as well – this will be linked to your OpenAthens account and allows you to do extra things such as to install the app on a mobile device and to collect CME/CPD credits.

Once logged in you can search for a topic or browse 

If you have searched for a topic then you can go to the “Patient leaflets” section of that topic.

You can then click on the link to download the PDF: 

If you have selected the browse option from the homepage then you can browse an A-Z list of leaflets, or select to browse by specialty. All leaflets include a publication date so you can see how recently it has been updated.

Tomorrow for Health Information Week we'll be looking at a web site to keep you up to date with research featuring in the media...

Health Information Week day 1: Clinical Key #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 and over the next 5 days we will be signposting some resources and web sites we hope you will find useful.

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 1 of Health Information Week we are looking at Clinical Key.

Clinical Key is a fantastic resource and many of our users will be familiar with the high quality content it contains such as the Lancet journal series, electronic books and topic pages, but did you know it also contains a wide selection of information sheets in a variety of languages that are specifically tailored to patients?

To access them go to www.clinicalkey.com and login with your OpenAthens account. If you don’t have an account you can register for one here: https://openathens.nice.org.uk/

Once you’re logged in you can click to browse patient education topics or to search, select “Patient Ed.” From the list of resource types and type in your search terms:

From your search results you can browse the contents to find the most useful information for your patient. Click on a result for more information.

Once you’ve chosen click on the option to print, and it will create a printable PDF for you. You can choose your language (if available). You can also add your name and contact details for your patient.

Clinical Key is a great all round resource that can support both you and you patients, from complex clinical information through to videos, topic pages and patient education sheets.

Tomorrow for Health Information Week we'll be looking at another really useful resource for supporting patients.

Your summer reading starts here with our new leisure collection

Off on holiday and need a read for the beach? Having your own summer reading challenge? Simply love books?

Last year the Library was successful in a bid to Greenheart to establish a leisure reading collection for staff and thanks to their generosity the collection is now available for staff to enjoy.

You may remember we were asking for ideas for titles and authors to buy for our new leisure collection. We took on your recommendations and ordered almost everything we could from the list of suggestions you kindly gave us. Then we added a few extra titles we thought you might enjoy with all the library staff recommending at least one book they have read and loved.

We now have a great collection of books available at all three of our libraries. Our leisure reading collections encompasses a really wide range of genres, topics, cultures and interests. From literary fiction, family sagas, and sci-fi, to cookery, interior design, biographies and gardening, we hope there is something for everyone.

You can find all of our leisure collection on the library catalogue or you can do it the old fashioned way and pop into the library to browse what is on the shelves...

With good evidence that reading for pleasure improves well being and empathy, and no fines on late books, we hope the library might be your first stop when planning your next read...

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.

Early closing at Isebrook Library Tuesday the 11th of June

Isebrook Library will be closing at 1 pm on Tuesday the 11th of June.



Berrywood and the Richmond libraries will be open as normal.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Library closures Monday 3rd June

Due to a staff event there will be some library closures on Monday the 3rd of June:

• Berrywood Library will be staffed intermittently throughout the day
• Isebrook Library will be closed all day
• Richmond Library at Northampton General Hospital will be closed in the morning but will be staffed later in the afternoon.

Access to registered members via our 24 hour swipe card system at the Berrywood and Richmond libraries will be available as usual.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Spring bank holiday closure

All the libraries will be unstaffed on Monday the 27th 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 28th at all of our sites.

Have you seen the news?

Health care is such a fast changing environment it's difficult to keep up with what is happening in the NHS.

With some many different sources of information, it can sometime be hard to know where to start, especially with the increase in fake news on social media and beyond.

But we can help.

Our Daily Health News service scans feeds from over 60 different sources every day. We review 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, Nuffield Trust 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...

May Day bank holiday closure

All the libraries will be unstaffed on Monday the 6th 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.

Isebrook Library will be closed over the bank holiday.

We reopen as normal on Tuesday the 7th at all of our sites.

BMJ Best Practice now available

Did you know you now have access to BMJ Best Practice?

BMJ Best Practice is a trusted clinical decision support tool which provides healthcare professionals with access to the latest relevant clinical information when making diagnosis and treatment decisions.

BMJ Best Practice includes:

• A modern, fresh user interface and navigation
• Enhanced differential diagnosis and treatment algorithms
• Videos covering the most common clinical procedures
• Improved page designs with quick links to increase speed to answer
• More than 250 integrated medical calculators
• Patient discussions and nearly 400 patient leaflets
• The latest evidence and Cochrane Clinical Answers
• Plus an award-winning app that can be used offline, ensuring that you always have the information you need, when you need it. 

To access BMJ Best Practice go to: https://bestpractice.bmj.com/

Log in using your NHS OpenAthens account (if you don’t have an account yet you can register for one here). 

Once logged in you can also register for a personal account which allows you to record CME/CPD activity for revalidation and you can access it offline via a free app for Android and iOS devices.

To support you in getting started, download the user guide or visit the FAQ section. If you need any more information, please contact the library.