Author: Jason Curtis

Read by QxMD helps you keep up to date with new articles

Posted on by

Read by QxMD is an app and website that allows you to discover and read relevant new healthcare journal articles. It does this by enabling you to specify journals, collections, keywords or topics to follow, and suggests relevant new articles that match your criteria. This way, you can build your own personalised alerting service.

It's free to create an account, and you can link your account to the journal holdings of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust, Staffordshire University or Keele University to make downloading PDF copies of articles easier.

On the mobile version, you can store your OpenAthens account so that when you view a paper, the app will attempt to download the PDF version if we subscribe to the journal or if it is available, an open access copy. If you find an interesting paper and it’s not available as a PDF, we can still order a copy for you - you just need to complete an article request form available on our website.

You can add papers to your own virtual collections, recommend papers, and discuss articles.

Read by QxMD covers a wide range of healthcare journals, so you’ll see more than just the ones we subscribe to.

We also suggest that you also sign up to KnowledgeShare If you want to keep up to date with new guidance, reports, UpToDate Practice Changing Updates, and other high-level evidence as these materials are not all covered by Read by QxMD.

Royal Marsden Manual: the go-to resource for nursing care

Posted on by

The Royal Marsden Manual of Clinical Procedures is an essential guide for nurses, nurse associates and healthcare assistants, and contains over 350 evidence-based clinical procedures related to every aspect of nursing care, from handwashing to cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

As well as supporting clinical practice, it can aid in writing local guidelines, in audits, and it can be used for educating staff.

How to access

The Royal Marsden Manual is available to SaTH staff and students via the SaTH Intranet Apps menu without a password. Simply click the icon to get full access.

Off-site access is also available to staff and students of Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, and also to Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust via an NHS OpenAthens account. NHS OpenAthens accounts allow access to a range of library and knowledge resources.

There is currently no mobile app, but the website is optimised for use on tablets and mobiles.

The Manual can be searched to find a procedure, or you can browse by chapter, procedure or illustration.

Local guidelines and notes

Local guidelines can be added to the Royal Marsden Manual in the form of links to the specific guideline on the SaTH Intranet, and local guidelines will then appear in search results.

It is also possible to add local notes to a Royal Marsden Manual guideline, and any local content is distinguished by a pink background.

If staff from Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, and Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust would like to discuss adding local information, please contact either Jason Curtis, Site Librarian at Shrewsbury on 01743 492511 or jason.curtis1@nhs.net, or Louise Stevens, Site Librarian at Telford on 01952 641222 ext. 4694 or l.stevens@nhs.net.

Not sure where to publish your article? Ask Jane!

Posted on by

Are you looking to write an article for a scholarly journal, or already have but don't know where to submit it to? Try asking Jane.

Jane (the 'Journal / Author Name Estimator') is a tool for finding relevant journals in your subject area. Simply enter your title (and abstract if you have one), click 'Find Journals' and see what Jane suggests.

Jane compares your article title and abstract to millions of articles in PubMed and find journals with the best matches. Jane also shows each journal's  Article Influence (AI) score and indicates which journals are indexed in Medline, and which ones offer open access without charging.

Checking Jane can also help you to avoid predatory publishers.

If you're looking to write or publish, don't forget that library staff can help you with literature searches, supply copies of books or articles you're referencing, and we also maintain a database of staff publications to help you publicise your work.

Library apps for knowledge on the move

Posted on by

We have a growing range of apps available for our resources, to make accessing information on the go even easier, in some cases even when offline.

The library itself doesn't have a mobile app, but our website is responsively designed to work on any size screen.

UpToDate

Android | iOS

UpToDate is an evidence-based knowledge system that helps clinicians make the right decisions at the point of care. It contains over 10,000 articles, providing evidence-graded treatment recommendations as well as diagnostic and other information for common as well as rare conditions. It also offers thousands of images, clinical calculators and a drug interactions checker.

The mobile app is available to SaTH staff and requires the use of a personal registration created whilst using UpToDate on-site.

BNF (British National Formulary) and BNF for Children

Android | iOS

The BNF/BNFC app is aimed at prescribers, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals who need sound, up-to-date information about the use of medicines. It combines the content from the BNF and BNFC, ensuring easy access to BNF information wherever you are.

No authentication required. Works offline.

BMJ Best Practice

Android | iOS

BMJ Best Practice provides access to the latest evidence-based information for healthcare professionals, structured around the patient consultation with advice on symptom evaluation, test ordering, treatment approach and follow up. It also offers clinical calculators, patient information leaflets and some procedural videos.

The mobile app is available to all NHS staff and authentication requires a personal account, which can be created whilst on-site on a SaTH PC, or whilst logged in with an NHS OpenAthens account. Works offline.

Adobe Digital Editions

Android | iOS

Adobe Digital Editions is required to download our e-books to your mobile device for offline reading. Free registration for an Adobe ID required, and an NHS OpenAthens account is required to access and download e-books to your device. Our guide to downloading e-books gives more details.

E-books on the go

Posted on by

Did you know that books from Shrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries’ collection of over 16,000 e-books can be downloaded to your mobile device for offline reading?

If you have an Apple or Android device, download the free Adobe Digital Editions app and create a free Adobe ID to log into it. Then access our e-book collection, login with NHS OpenAthens, find your book, and select ‘Download Book’.

You’ll be able to select the length of time you’d like to download the book for, up to 14 days, but if you need it for longer, you can simply ‘borrow’ it again after 14 days. Alternatively, if you just want a chapter, you can simply download a PDF of a single chapter which won’t expire.

Finding e-books is easy - simply select the e-book tab on OmniSearch.

BMJ Best Practice clinical decision tool

Posted on by

BMJ Best Practice is now available to all NHS organisation in England.

It provides access to the latest evidence-based information for healthcare professionals, structured around the patient consultation, with advice on symptom evaluation, test ordering, treatment approach and follow up. It also offers clinical calculators, patient information leaflets and some procedural videos.

 

Onsite at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals (SaTH) simply visit the BMJ Best Practice website for password-free access. You'll have the option to create a personal account to record usage for CME/CPD points.

For off-site access, you can use an NHS OpenAthens account. Visit the BMJ Best Practice website and login with your NHS OpenAthens account. You can also use a personal account created whilst on-site at SaTH.

Mobile apps are available for Android and iOS devices. These require a personal account to authenticate which can either be created whilst on-site on a SaTH PC, or off-site by logging in with NHS OpenAthens account and then registering for a personal account.

You'll also find BMJ Best Practice as an option in OmniSearch where it can be searched along with many other resources.

For more details or advice, pop into one of our libraries.

We're having a big impact!

Posted on by

We recently carried out a survey of all library users (and potential users) to see what you thought about our services and resources, and we also asked staff what impact we are having on patient care, research and continuing professional development.

Some of the highlights are:

  • 211 responses in total
  • 98% of respondents that had used the libraries in the last 12 months rated the overall service as 'Excellent' or 'Good'
  • 93% of respondents that had used the libraries in the last 12 months rated the study environment as 'Excellent' or 'Good'

Some of comments relating to impact were:

Evidence Updates provide me with up-to-date information on my field of working which is focused on dementia care. I have accessed guidelines mentioned in one of the articles to improve patients' quality of care and also developed my own understanding of interventions for dementia that can be effectively used in general hospital settings.

Being able to access UpToDate is in my opinion essential in providing immediate high quality care for patients with less common conditions presenting to hospital. I find it invaluable.

I was able to use library resources for examination preparation. I was able to get a very new book from the library which was very helpful in the examination. In view of passing my exam, I am doing more for the department and I am more confident in decisions made for patient care.

There were also some suggestions for improvement, and we'll be having a look at these as we look at our priorities.

Thank you to everyone that completed the survey, and congratulations to the three people that won book tokens!

You can download the full survey results, and if you have any more feedback, or more stories about how we've had a impact, we'd be happy to hear from you.

Making borrowing even easier!

Posted on by

We’ve recently introduced automatic renewals on our books, with 5 auto-renewals for 28 day loans, and 10 auto-renewals for 14 day loans.

This means that unless the book is reserved by someone else, or has come from another library, you won't need to worry about forgetting to renew your loans as we'll do it for you.

We’ll still send reminders about what you have out on loan, and we'll let you know if we’re unable to auto-renew your books for any reason.

This is something we've been asked about for some time, and thankfully due a library system upgrade we've been able to introduce it. If you have other comments on library services, or if there are services or resources you'd like to see, you can fill out our library survey until the end of January and be in with a chance to win a £20 book token. You can also contact us at any time with feedback or suggestions.

Serious fun with educational board games

Posted on by

Did you know that we stock a range of educational board games to make learning about important topics engaging and fun?

These can be borrowed for use with your team, and library staff can come and help facilitate a game for your team.

The complete list is below, with links to the publishers website for more information on how they work, numbers of players, time to allow etc.

Rapid e-book series for reference or revision

Posted on by

The 'Rapid' series of e-books are concise and easy-to-read, and ideal for reference or revision, covering the common scenarios that students or newly qualified staff might encounter.

They can be read online or downloaded to a mobile device for 24/7 access, and are available to library members via NHS OpenAthens.

You can access them on our virtual bookshelf, or you can search the whole collection of 20,000 e-books via OmniSearch.