News

Keep up to date with library news, and new developments in health information resources and services

Plant "swap and buy" at Telford Health Library

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Gardening boosts mood, relieves stress, builds strength and creates calm.  Take the opportunity to get out in the lovely weather and get planting.  A range of seedlings and cuttings will be available at Telford Health Library from Tuesday 24 - Friday 27 May between 8.30 and 17.00.  All donations will go to the Shropshire Wildlife Trust to encourage nature to thrive.

If you have surplus plants at home - bring some along and swap for something different.  Grab a real bargain and enjoy de-stressing in your garden.

 

 

Make better use of evidence and knowledge with 'The Knowledge' newsletter

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Want to know how to make better use of evidence and organisational knowledge in your work? Have a look at our latest newsletter called 'The Knowledge' that looks at knowledge mobilisation.

Download the latest issue of 'The Knowledge'

The latest issue covers:

  • Using Trip Pro to locate evidence
  • Sharing knowledge with knowledge cafés and expresso cafés
  • Share your publications in the Staff Publications Hub
  • Advanced searching for articles
  • Learn how to use knowledge resources quickly with our bite-sized training videos

 

Experience of Care Week

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Experience of Care Week is an international initiative to celebrate the work that is happening across health and social care to keep improving experiences of care for patients, families, carers and staff.

Experience of Care Week runs from the 25th to the 29th April 2022, and to celebrate the library will have displays with posters, books and useful information available at both sites.

Our librarians have put together a guide with links to useful journal articles about patient experience which is available to download - Experience of care week materials or you can pick up a paper copy from the library.

Celebrate World Book Night 2022 with a free book

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Celebrate World Book Night 2022 with Shrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries, and collect your FREE book gift bag from Shrewsbury or Telford Health Library on Friday 29th April 2022 between 8.30 and 17.00 - while stocks last.

De-stress with a good book.  Get lost in a good murder with a free copy of 'The Dinner Guest' by B P Walter. The tragic end to an intimate dinner in an affluent West London home unearths a mesh of secrets and deception in this chilling, ingeniously plotted domestic noir.

On a similar theme, why not try your hand at our Murder Mystery Puzzle competition? You could win a book token!

World Book Night is a national celebration of reading and books which takes place in April every year.  Books are given out across the UK to enable people to re-discover the pleasure of reading.  World Book Night is run by The Reading Agency, a charity that inspires people to become confident and enthusiastic readers.

What are the benefits of reading for pleasure?

  • 19% of readers say that reading stops them from feeling lonely
  • Higher literacy skills are associated with a range of positive societal benefits, including having a stronger sense of belonging to society and being more likely to trust others.
  • Studies have found that reading for pleasure enhances empathy, understanding of the self, and the ability to understand one’s own and others’ identities
  • Regular readers for pleasure reported fewer feelings of stress and depression than non-readers, and stronger feelings of relaxation from reading than from watching television or engaging with technology intensive activities
  • Those who read for pleasure have higher levels of self-esteem and a greater ability to cope with difficult situations. Reading for pleasure is associated with better sleeping patterns
  • Adults who read for just 30 minutes a week are 20% more likely to report greater life satisfaction
  • A study of 1,136 self-reported ‘avid-readers’, indicates that shared reading experiences and recommendations supporting choice are key influences on positive attitudes towards reading

Health Services Transformation Bulletin now available

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We've just published the second issue of our new Health Services Transformation Bulletin.

This new bulletin supports the recovery of health services and their future development, covering topics such as digital medicine, organisational development, patient flow, virtual wards, and workforce issues.

Containing research, articles, reports and case studies, the bulletin will provide the evidence to support change and innovation.

Many of the evidence resources listed in the bulletin can be accessed without any passwords, but some will need an NHS OpenAthens account, or require free registration. Where the item cannot easily be accessed, we've provided link to request a copy from the library.

Changes to advanced searching for articles

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At the end of March 2022, the Healthcare Databases Advanced Search (HDAS) interface provided by NICE for advanced searching for articles is going to be turned off. The same quality databases will still be available however (Medline, CINAHL, EMBASE and more) but these will then be searched via their provider interfaces (EBSCO, Ovid or ProQuest).

This does mean that there are new interfaces to learn (though the principles of searching remain the same) and you may need to search across two or even three different interfaces for comprehensive coverage of a topic using different databases (for example, if you're doing a systematic review).

The good news is that for many searches, the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub provides an easy way to search for articles and grey literature across a range of databases and information sources.

For more advanced searching needs, we will be producing search guides and offering training on how to make the best use of the provider interfaces.

We already have some guides that may be helpful.

We have a guide to Searching Medline and CINAHL via EBSCO, and we also have a guide to the use of different Search Operators across a wide range of healthcare databases (including how to access the thesaurus, how to do proximity searches, and whether a databases offers Boolean operators). If you're unsure of even which database to start with, we have a rough outline of the coverage of the main healthcare databases for literature searching.

 

 

 

Using Trip Pro to locate evidence

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Trip Pro is a database that can help you locate material such as guidelines, evidence summaries, systematic reviews and much more.

The basic version of Trip can be searched by anyone, but the NHS has made the Pro version available and this offers more systematic reviews, medical images and advanced search features.

Trip Pro can be accessed on any PC within Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, and off-site access is available via an NHS OpenAthens account. When you login with NHS OpenAthens, Trip Pro will automatically provide you with links to full-text articles (where available) including those available through our journal subscriptions.

Trip offers a fairly basic interface, but you can filter results in a number of ways using the filters on the left-hand side. These include a filter for UK guidelines, making it easy to find any NICE guidance, along with guidance from Royal Colleges and other professional bodies. Trip claims to have the largest international collection of guidelines, and these can be filtered by region.

The filter for controlled trials offers an interesting feature whereby the RobotReviewer tool has been used to estimate the quality of trials as either 'high' or 'uncertain' based on the abstract, so a certain amount of critical appraisal has been carried out.

There are also filters for ongoing systematic reviews and clinical trials.

Although Trip Pro does not systematically search the journal literature, it does include a number of results classed as primary research, and these can be filtered to 'key primary research' or just 'primary research'. It's not clear how the distinction is made.

Trip offers a guide to which sources it searches.

Trip Pro searches a number of the resources that were covered by the NICE Evidence Search and is a partial replacement for it as NICE Evidence Search is closing at the end of March.

 

 

Accessing full-text is even easier in KnowledgeShare evidence updates

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There has been a change in the way full-text links in KnowledgeShare Evidence Updates are provided that should make it easier for you to access the full-text of articles you are alerted to.

Where a resource (usually a journal article) has a link that says ‘Check for full-text availability’ you'll be taken to the LibKey system. The first time you use it, you'll need to specify which organisation you work for. Once you've done that, you'll be provided with links to the full-text (if we have access) or a link to our request form (if we don’t) which will automatically populate with the resource details to make it really easy to order a copy.

You'll need an NHS OpenAthens account to view full-text articles or to order items from us.

You may also see a link to 'View article in context' and this will allow you browse the contents of the journal issue where the article is.

If you haven't already signed up, our KnowledgeShare Evidence Update service is a personalised current awareness service allowing you to receive new evidence on topics  tailored to your requirements. It covers policy documents, guidance, reports, and a range of summarised evidence, so you won’t be inundated with primary research articles, and emails are sent each fortnight.

 

Evidence at your fingertips with the new NHS Knowledge and Library Hub

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The NHS Knowledge and Library Hub is a new way to search for journal articles. Covering a wide range of databases, including Medline and CINAHL, the Hub allows you to perform simple or more complex searches, and access the full-text with a single-click (where available). Where we don't have access to the full-text, it is easy to request a copy, and the details of the item are automatically added to the request form.

The Hub offers a range of features to make searching for knowledge and evidence easier:

  • Search across a wide range of databases simultaneously to locate journal articles and grey literature such as reports and conference proceedings
  • Filter your search by date, publication type or by database
  • Access the PDF full-text with a single-click where available, or request a copy
  • Repeat your search with a single-click in a range of evidence resources such as UpToDate (SaTH only), BMJ Best Practice, Trip database, the Cochrane Library, or in our book and e-book collections
  • Access individual databases such as Medline, CINAHL and EMBASE for advanced searching including thesaurus terms
  • Email, print or save references with formatted citations in formats such as Harvard

The Hub requires an NHS OpenAthens account for access, and it is available to all NHS staff and learners.

Download our Guide to Searching the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub for more information on making the best use of the Hub and all its features.