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 Whether you're settling into university life, juggling clinical placements, or stepping into your first professional role, one thing is clear: being able to find, judge, and use information confidently is a game‑changer. That’s where the Health Library’s Information Skills eTutorials come in. These short, practical online modules are designed to help you build the research and information‑handling skills you’ll rely on throughout your studies and your healthcare career—and you can complete them anytime, anywhere, at your own pace. Why bother with information skills? Searching for good information can sometimes feel overwhelming. Databases, keywords, journals, evidence hierarchies, critical appraisal… It’s a lot. But strong information‑seeking skills don’t just make assignments easier—they make you a safer, more informed healthcare practitioner. Reliable evidence underpins everything from clinical decisions to patient education, and the sooner you feel comfortable navigating it, t...

Are you searching effectively? Do you want to improve your skills?  Whether you are looking for articles for your assignments or you need to check the latest evidence for your work, you need to have the right skills Complete our short quiz Check Your Skills and find out what information skills you have and how you can improve them.  Answer all the questions and download your action plan to help you to improve.

Make the most of NHS resources and develop your skills by signing up to our training opportunities. Courses are available online or face-to-face and are delivered by our qualified librarian team. The following training sessions are available to UHNM staff: NHS Knowledge and Library Hub The Knowledge and Library Hub lets you search multiple healthcare resources including NHS Core content and UHNM subscribed resources. This course includes searching for full text of journal articles and a brief look at databases and point of care tools such as BMJ Best practice. Literature Searching in Medline Database This 1 to 1 session focuses on searching the medicine databases for health literature. This session includes running and saving a search, accessing full text journals and where to search next. Searching the Cochrane Library for Systematic Reviews and Randomised Control Trials This brief 1 to 1 session will show you how to conduct and search in Cochrane Library and save your results. Clin...

 Make sure you maximise your potential and become the best searcher you can be. This will help you to find the right information quickly and confidently to support your studies, dissertation, professional development, research and ultimately lead to better patient care. Our etutorials will set you on the right path. Go to our Information Skills etutorial page , explore the different sections and complete the etutorials to develop your skills and learn more about our resources: What are digital and information skills? Have you got them? Your digital skills – how can the Health Library help? Information skills to support literature searching Analyse your question to get your literature search off to a good start Develop your search skills with our online tutorials Learn to use the right resource Is the information you find good quality? Make sure you use information ethically Use your digital skills to share the information you find Stay up-to-date with updates in your field More tr...

 Keep your skill set up-to-date with the Health Library Information Skills etutorials . Check out our latest poster below for more details. eTutorials A4 poster by Cheryl Kent

 You live, work and study in a digital world. It is so important that you develop the right skills to maximise your potential to achieve success in your studies, work and for your patients. The Health Library can help you to develop, demonstrate and deliver your digital skills. We have been showcasing how the Health Library can support you in developing your skills. Please explore these blog posts which detail the training and development opportunities available to you: What are digital and information skills? Have you got them? Your digital skills – how can the Health Library help? Information skills to support literature searching Analyse your question to get your literature search off to a good start Develop your search skills with our online tutorials Learn to use the right resource Is the information you find good quality? Make sure you use information ethically Use your digital skills to share the information you find Stay up-to-date with updates in your field More traini...

 During the past couple of months we have showcased some of our online tutorial options to help you to develop, demonstrate and deliver your digital skills, so supporting your work and studies. We also have a range of in-person training delivered by our experienced, qualified librarian team. For more information about the courses and workshops they deliver, either face-to-face or online, whether in groups or as personal sessions, please see our training pages: Courses for Keele students Courses for NHS community staff Courses for UHNM staff If you need any other help you can contact the training team . Remember our online eTutorials Find all our online tutorials on the Information Skills web page on the Health Library website . More help Contact the Health Library if you need any help finding the information you need.

 Healthcare is a regularly changing industry and a plethora of content is published every year. Staying up-to-date, or managing your current awareness, whether for your professional regulations, current practice or keeping up with the latest research is an important element of your work and studies. You can use your digital skills to stay up-to-date and manage the increasing amount of new information. Learn more about staying up-to-date and the tools you can use by completing our etutorials: What is current awareness? And why do you need it Current awareness tools Learn more about the tools you can use to stay up-to-date Introduction to KnowledgeShare Watch this video for an overview of KnowledgeShare for NHS staff More eTutorials Find all our online tutorials on the Information Skills web page on the Health Library website . More help Contact the Health Library if you need any help finding the information you need.

 Communicating information is an important information skill. You can demonstrate your digital skills by creating content based on your information search or research. This can help you to build your own professional portfolio and support your study and work. We’ve created etutorials to help you get started with 3 common routes of communication that you’ll come across. Writing an academic paper Get hints and tips on how to write an academic paper, whether for an assignment or to publish How to create an academic poster Hints and tips on what to consider and how to create your academic poster 10 steps to creating patient information Hints and tips to get you started developing your own patient information More eTutorials Find all our online tutorials on the Information Skills web page on the Health Library website . Take a look at the blog posts we have published so far in this series on digital skills . More help Contact the Health Library if you need any help...

 It is important that you recognise and credit the original creators of the information you use in your own studies and work. This is a significant aspect of your digital skills. You can do this by including references. Learn why this is so essential to your studies by completing our etutorial: Introduction to referencing and plagiarism Keele University students can also use RefWorks to help them to manage references. Complete the Keele online tutorial: Manage your references in a nutshell More eTutorials Find all our online tutorials on the Information Skills web page on the Health Library website . More help Contact the Health Library if you need any help finding the information you need.

It is important that you check the information you find from your searches to ensure that it is good quality and is relevant to your question. The Health Library can help you. Complete our tutorials to develop the right digital skills to evaluate and critically appraise the information and articles you find. 1. Start by learning about the CRAAP checklist; watch this short video 2. Learn more about how to evaluate information on the Internet by completing our tutorial Evaluating information on the Internet 3. Learn more about Critical Appraisal Tools which will help you to critically appraise the research articles that you find More eTutorials Find all our online tutorials on the Information Skills web page on the Health Library website . More help Contact the Health Library if you need any help finding the information you need. 

You need to make sure that you search the right resources to find the information you are looking for. This will mean that you don’t waste time searching irrelevant resources and your searching will be more efficient. You can develop this key digital skill by learning more about the types of resources that are available at the Health Library. Start by completing our tutorial Select the Right Resource to learn about the different types of resources you will come across. Then try our online tutorials that will help you to learn about some of our key resources. Basic Resources Start by learning about the basic resources available at the Health Library 1. Using books  Get information quickly from books 2. Using ebooks  Make the most of online books 3. What is an article?  Learn how to recognise and find academic articles 4. Finding good stuff on the Internet  Tips and tricks on using google to find healthcare information Key NHS Resources 5. Reg...

 There are some key search skills you can develop to help your literature search to be more efficient and effective. These are essential skills to have to use in a wide range of different online resources, such as healthcare databases and even google scholar. Start to develop your skills by completing these online tutorials: 1. Identify your search terms  Learn how to use keywords, phrases, wildcards and truncation  2. Using a thesaurus  Learn how using a thesaurus can help you to find articles via databases 3. Combining searches with boolean operators  Use AND, OR and NOT to combine search terms 4. Applying filters to focus results  Use filters to focus your search results More eTutorials Find all our online tutorials on the Information Skills web page on the Health Library website . More help Contact the Health Library if you need any help finding the information you need.

 When you want to start looking for information you need a clear idea in your mind of the question you are trying to answer. Start your literature search plan by analysing your question. This will help you to identify all the different elements that you need to consider and give focus to your search. And we can help you to develop the skills to do that. Complete our short online tutorials to learn more about analysing your question: 1. Start with Identify your Question to learn about some of the ways you can breakdown an assignment question. 2. Learn about Using PICO to help you to analyse and create clinical questions. Try the quiz to have a go yourself at creating a clinical question. 3. Find More Analysis Tools which will give you pointers about how to breakdown questions looking at different aspects of healthcare. More eTutorials Find all our online tutorials on the Information Skills web page on the Health Library website . Read more of our  blogs loo...

As healthcare workers you make decisions based on evidence. Whether you are presenting arguments in an assignment, discussing changing practice, researching a new intervention or deciding on the best patient care, you need the best evidence to help you. To find the best evidence you need to use your information skills, so that you can gather the best information as efficiently and effectively as possible. Developing a literature search plan will remind you of the steps to follow and help you to be systematic in your searching. We can help you to develop your skills and set you on the right path to completing your literature search, to find the information you need. Try these tutorials to get started with literature searching: 1. Complete our tutorial Introduction to Literature Searching . Follow these steps to start your literature search plan. Print out your completed plan at the end. 2. Save a template Search Plan . Use this plan to prompt you to think about your search t...

 Use your digital skills to find the right information that you need for your assignments, studies, work, research and patient care. The Health Library also helps you to find the right information that you need for your assignments, studies, work, research and patient care. We’ve got resources to support your skills development, resources to give you the right information and experience to help you to find the right path to achieve success in your information searching. Here’s a quick introduction to the facilities, services and resources you can access at the Health Library: Get to know the Health Library 1. Watch the Health Library video for a brief overview of how we support our users 2. Complete our tutorial Using the Health Library for a photo-tour and more information about our facilities and services. Find out more from your induction tutorial We have a number of inductions to help our different user groups get started at the Health Library NHS Library Ind...

 Digital skills can support you in your studies and work and life! Information skills are a group of digital skills that help you to find the right, good quality information you need to complete your studies, research, work, professional development and ultimately help you to deliver best patient care. So, what skills do you need and can you tell if you have them? Here’s how we can help you to find out: 1. Watch our video What are digital skills? for an overview of what the skills are and how the Health Library can support you. 2. Watch our video Introduction to Information Skills to learn about the specific skills that will help you to find good quality information. 3. Complete our tutorial Check your skills to check if you are an effective searcher. What do you think of our tutorials? Please let us know if you find our etutorials and videos to be useful by completing our feedback form . More eTutorials Find all our online tutorials on the Information Skills w...

 Make sure you’ve got the right skills to get the best evidence for your studies. Complete our online tutorial Check Your Skills . Take the quiz to find out how to: prepare for your project organise your search select the right information from your results   Get your action plan to find out how to improve your skills and find information more effectively. Take the time to develop your skills to become a successful information searcher. More eTutorials Find more etutorials to help you to develop your digital skills on our Information Skills eTutorials page. Book Training Book a training session with one of our experience librarians to get more support for your searching.

Stay up-to-date with the latest changes to eresources and get bite-sized learning to make the most of them – follow our Information Skills for Health blog . We post lots of useful information about: New eresources Updates to eresources Quick step-by-step instructions to using eresources eTutorials Videos Latest training opportunities And more… We add our blog posts to our Twitter feed, so you can follow there too . 

  You need the best information skills to find the best evidence to support your studies, work and patient care. You can learn something new or update your information searching skills by completing our online tutorials. We have developed online tutorials especially for healthcare staff and students to help you to find the right information at the right time from the right resources. You can: Watch a video Complete an interactive tutorial Take a quiz Follow a presentation Download a worksheet All our tutorials are freely available, no login required. Complete them at your own pace, whenever you want to. Download the reflection document to keep a record of your learning. Learn now: Have you got the right digital skills? How can the Health Library help you? Introduction to Literature Searching Start your literature search by analysing your question Develop Your Search Skills Use the Right Resources Evaluating your Information - use the best evidence Are you using information ethicall...