Health Library News

I hope that you have found some useful resources over the past year, during this series. You can find links to all the resources mentioned, as well as many more, via our delicious bookmarks . Here we also include links to support and provide information about a wide range of conditions and diseases. You can also look through the previous blog entries if you need a reminder about a particular resource. Don’t forget that you can sign up to receive updates in your inbox from our blog; so you’ll always know about the latest resources we have on offer. You can also follow us on Twitter or stay in touch via Facebook .

Here is a resource to help your patients. It is a library of mobile apps that are aimed at patients and have been reviewed by the NHS to ensure that they are clinically safe. There are official NHS apps as well as apps developed by external providers. Some are free, others need to be paid for. Many of the apps also include a rating. There are apps for: A range of conditions and treatments Health living eg mental health, smoking cessation, fitness and weight-loss Health Information eg. where to find services Social Care

NICE Evidence Search is a healthcare specialist search engine. It will allow you to search across a wide range of accredited resources that have been approved by NICE Evidence. Thus you can be confident that the results you find will be of good quality. The results screen includes topic guides, if available, as well as your search results. You can also use the filters to focus your results more. Filters include: Area of interest Types of information Type of Clinical Query Sources Medicines & Devices Published Date Screen-shot of results from a simple search The results will often link to the full-text. This search engine does not search across journals for primary research. You can find out how to use NICE Evidence Search by watching our short video .

Google Scholar is an online search engine that limits its search to scholarly literature that is in the public domain. It searches across a wide range of subject areas. You can reach the advanced search options by clicking the down arrow on the search box. The advanced options allow you to include limits for an author, journal and date range as well as allowing you to include combinations of search terms. Google scholar is helpful for trying to find particular articles where you don’t have the complete reference and for searching for open access articles. However remember to check our journal A-Z lists to see whether we have a subscription for the full-text and which collection it will be available in. Screen-shot of Google Scholar advanced search options

If you are looking for a job within the NHS, then try NHS Jobs . You can search for jobs using the simple text box or try the advanced search options to limit your search to particular employers, staff group or location. When you register you can set up alerts so that you are notified when new jobs are posted, apply for posts online and save your application forms.

NHS Improving Quality works to improve health outcomes by providing improvement and change expertise. They work to research and identify best practice from within the NHS as well as globally. They are investigating a number of topic areas: Patient Safety Seven Day Services Integrated Care Experience of Care Long Term Conditions NHS Health Check CCG Capability NHS Change Model You can search the website for publications and case studies. You can find improvement tools, guides and reports as well as posters and leaflets.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is a charitable organisation that is interested in society and social justice and funds research with the aim to identify issues and develop solutions impacting on poverty and inequality. They publish a range of reports relating to a wide variety of topics affecting society and specific communities. One of the categories is Health and Care. In this section you can find topics such as: Carers Community Care Disabled People Health Independent Living Mental Health Residential Care Sexual / Sexuality Social Services You might find this website useful when looking for background information or case studies.

A quirky name but a useful resource. The elves help you to keep up-to-date with the latest evidence-based literature on a number of topics: The Commissioning Elf The Dental Elf The Diabetes Elf The Education Elf The Learning Disabilities Elf The Lifestyle Elf The Mental Elf The Musculoskeletal Elf They highlight the latest reviews, guidelines and policy changes and appraise the studies presented. You can sign-up to receive the latest updates by email or follow their RSS feed or Twitter feed.

This is an interesting blog where topic-specific literature search strategies are shared. The suggested searches give you Mesh headings as well as possible free-text phrases related to a specific topic the author is investigating. The tag cloud gives you an indication of the type of topics covered. The searches are pretty detailed and comprehensive. It is an interesting place to look if you are struggling to think of your own search terms. screen-shot of a selected pubmed search strategy

Pedro is a physiotherapy evidence database. Here you will find randomised trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines specific to physiotherapy topics. It is free to search, no login is needed, though you may not get access to all the full-text articles it contains – check our journal collections to see whether we have the full-text.  The database is updated regularly and you can sign-up to an email list so that you can receive the latest updates in your inbox. Using Pedro will help you to focus your literature search on selected, good quality, subject specific material.

If you are interested in the coming technological breakthroughs in healthcare then check out the National Horizon Scanning Centre . You can find reports and articles on the latest developments, including topics such as: pharmaceuticals medical devices and equipment diagnostic tests and procedures therapeutic interventions rehabilitation and therapy public health activities You can search for a topic or view material by specialty or even suggest a topic yourself.

Dr Foster collect and collate a range of data in order to provide healthcare information and monitor performance in the NHS. They publish the hospital guide each year which allows you to compare various factors from NHS institutions. Here is the 2012 Hospital Guide .

If you are thinking about working in the NHS or you just want to know what everyone does, then you can find lots of information on the NHS Careers website. You can: Browse by career, over 350 of them! Look for course information Search for job vacancies You can also get more details about what it is like working in the NHS as well as read about some real life stories. So whether you want to be a Nurse or Phlebotomist or Librarian (!), work in Ambulance Care or Urology, check it out.

NHS Local has an absolute plethora of information services to help the general public, patients and healthcare staff. Helping the General Public: There is a section to help us all to try and be healthier by tackling public health concerns such as alcohol, eating well, exercise, sexual health and smoking a well as helping pregnant women with advice about maternity services. Supporting Patients: Patients can use this website to find particular local services and compare them as well as provide feedback of their own experiences. There is a Find service which allows patients to find local services and support groups in their area. Patients can also get help in managing their condition with advice and tools. NHS Staff Development The website also includes a link to the NHS Local Learning website . Here NHS staff can find a number of learning tools and support to help them to develop their skills, including elearning courses, for example Every Contact Counts Fly...

The Care Quality Commission is an organisation that monitors the standards of health care providers in the UK. On their website you can find their reports based on the services delivered by a range of providers including hospitals, GP services, care homes, dentists as well as specialist services. You can also find reviews, reports and surveys relating to a number of care services, for example: Mental Health Act Annual Report State of Care Reports Mortality Outlier Reports Outpatient Survey Maternity Services Survey Meeting the health care needs of people in care homes Services for people who have had a stroke and their carers Many more available online.

The West Midlands Public Health Observatory (WMPHO) can provide you with lots of information and data about public health issues. You can find links to reports, charts and data for a wide range of topics from alcohol issues, to climate change and health, long term mortality trends, older people’s health issues and social care with many more in-between. You can also view local profiles across a range of measurements, where the data can be broken down by NHS trust or geographical area. Please note that during 2013 the public health observatories will be incorporated into Public Health England's Knowledge and Intelligence Team (West Midlands).

If you work in Occupational Therapy you might want to check out the Occupational Therapy Critically Appraised Topics (OT CATs). A CAT is a short summary of the evidence around a particular topic. It usually looks at a number of studies related to the same problem or clinical question in order to try to identify an answer to the query. On this site you can find CATS related to a number of occupational therapy based specific topics. The CAT will include a detailed description of the problem being investigated, the search strategy used, a list of the references identified, a summary of the evidence found as well as a bottom-line conclusion.

The Centre for Evidence Based Medicine offers a range of courses and tutorials to help clinicians to develop the skills to practice evidence-based medicine. It also makes available a range of tools, presentations and publications to support practitioners and the teaching of EBM. You can find a number of tools to help you with the step-by-step process: Using PICO to help you to develop a clinical question Where to look for evidence Critical Appraisal tools and worksheets Application of the results to your own situation CEBM also have a youtube channel .which includes videos of presentations and tutorials. Check out this PICO video . We also have a number of etutorials to get you started with the basics.

Pubmed is a freely available, online, searchable, bibliographic database, which includes data from Medline. You can use it to complement and supplement your literature searching. You use the main text box to enter your simple free-text search terms or the more sophisticated advanced search options to combine searches and apply limits. The results list will often include links to freely available article pdfs, though you will need to check on our journal lists for access to most journal titles. The search results list can be filtered, emailed or exported. If you sign-up and create a free login you can also save your searches and set up alerts. Pubmed also has a citation matcher which is really useful when you are trying to track-down a reference where you have only part of the details. There are a range of tutorials to help you to get to grips with Pubmed.

The Oxford Handbooks are very popular titles. Here at the Health Library we provide you with online access to some titles so that you don’t have to wait to access the full-text. Titles available include: Oxford handbook... for the Foundation Programme of Clinical Diagnosis of Clinical Examinations and Practical Skills of Clinical Haematology of Clinical Specialities of Clinical Surgery of Critical Care of Dialysis of Endocrinology & Diabetes of General Practice of Geriatric Medicine of Neurology of Obstetrics & Gynaecology of Paediatrics of Psychiatry of Respiratory Medicine of Urology eBooks are accessible via the Internet, are available 24/7 and don’t incur any fines. You can find out how to use our ebooks via our Using eBooks etutorial.