Author: Jason Curtis

UpToDate as a source of teaching images

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Are you looking for high-quality images for use in teaching? SaTH's subscription to UpToDate includes over 33,000 pictures, tables, illustrations, diagrams, graphs, algorithms, and videos to help you discuss and answer clinical questions with your colleagues and patients. Additionally, these graphics are easily exported to use in PowerPoint presentations for training purposes.

To locate graphics, you can do a topic search as usual and then select 'Graphic' to filter your search to graphics only.

The resulting graphics appear in thumbnail format; clicking on a thumbnail opens a larger version of the graphic and also provides a link to export to PowerPoint.

You can also view any graphic from within a topic by clicking the links to the images from the topic content list.

All the images in UpToDate are licensed for use in teaching within the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.

UpToDate clinical decision support tool

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To help towards Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust's goal of providing the safest, kindest care in the NHS, the Library, with the support of the Postgraduate and Undergraduate Education teams has started a subscription to the UpToDate clinical decision support resource.

UpToDate is written by clinicians for clinicians and offers easy access to high-quality information to inform diagnosis and treatment decisions. It has a proven positive impact on outcomes, and is associated with reduced cost of care, shorter length of stay, reduced complication rates and increased patient safety.

In an international subscriber survey carried out in 2014, 94% of respondents said UpToDate improved the quality of care they provide.

A recent survey of senior clinicians in SaTH gave examples of where using UpToDate has changed practice and was especially useful in rare or unusual conditions. It is also an excellent teaching resource, offers a drug interaction checker, can record usage for CPD points, and also offers hundreds of patient information leaflets.

UpToDate can be accessed on any PC in SaTH by visiting the UpToDate website. For off-site use, you can either create a username and password (useful if you want to record usage for CPD) or use your OpenAthens account. There is also a mobile app you can download for access anywhere.

For more information on accessing UpToDate off-site or by mobile app, visit the UpToDate page on our website.

Sources of bias in health research

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The Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford has developed a catalogue of sources of bias that may affect health care evidence, and may need to be taken into account when performing a critical appraisal on a published piece of research.

Just a few of the examples include:

Allocation bias

Systematic difference in how participants are assigned to treatment and comparison groups in a clinical trial.

Hot stuff bias

When a topic is fashionable (‘hot’)  investigators may be less critical in their approach to their research, and investigators and editors may not be able to resist the temptation to publish the results.

Positive results bias

The tendency to submit, accept and publish positive results rather than non-significant or negative results.

Volunteer bias

Participants volunteering to take part in a study intrinsically have different characteristics from the general population of interest.

For more information, including ways to reduce possible bias when carrying out research, visit the Catalogue of Bias.

E-learning modules on literature search skills available

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Health librarians, in collaboration with Health Education England have produced a set of e-learning modules on how to search the literature effectively.

These look at the principles behind searching, so the skills are applicable to any database you may use for searching the literature, including those in the OmniSearch article search, and the NICE advanced database (HDAS) search.

The modules are short (each taking no more than 20 minutes to complete) and may be ‘dipped into’ for reference, or completed to obtain a certificate. There are currently six modules suitable for novice searchers and those wishing to refresh their knowledge:

Building the foundations

Developing the skills

You'll need an OpenAthens account to access the modules (and all the many other e-learning packages available on the e-LfH platform) and the first time you access e-LfH you'll need to enter some personal details.

Library staff can also provide training and assistance with searching techniques and searching specific resources, and we can also perform searches on your behalf.

Have you signed up for KnowledgeShare yet?

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Why not make part of your committment to your continuing professional development to keep up to date with new healthcare knowledge?

One way of doing this is to sign up for our new KnowledgeShare Evidence Updates service and receive personalised updates of new information on topics you're interested in. Because the service is tailored to your interests, you're more likely to receive updates on only the things you really want to know about, and all the sources used are high-level evidence such as Cochrane Reviews or NICE Guidance.

Many of the resources used are freely available, so you'll be able to access them with one-click, and most of the remainder are available with an NHS OpenAthens account.

Updates are sent out fortnightly, so you won't be inundated with emails!

Sign up for KnowledgeShare Evidence Updates

 

Reminiscence boxes for people with dementia

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We have Reminiscence Boxes available in both libraries to help support people with dementia. The boxes contain items to provoke memories and discussion, and can be borrowed by library members for use in hospital or in the community.

The boxes are themed, and at Shrewsbury we have one that covers household items (including kitchen items, a ration book, coin packs etc.), while the other contains childhood games. At Telford we have a box that covers seaside and holiday memories, and another that covers gardening.

All boxes contain copies of ‘Picture books to share’ that tie in with the box’s theme, and these books are specially designed for use with people with dementia, with large colourful pictures and photographs along with some accompanying text.

The boxes can be borrowed for up to 28 days at a time, and renewed if no-one is waiting for them.

We hope you’ll find the boxes useful, and we’re keen to see them used as much as possible. We welcome feedback on the contents, and plan to develop them over time in response to feedback about items work better.

Libraries supporting learning

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Did you know that Shrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries offer a range of training to help you succeed?

As well as one-to-one support and training on how to find information in library resources, we also offer a range of courses, such as our pocket-sized training series of half-hour lunchtime sessions including:

  • Introduction to medical terminology
  • Getting started with Twitter
  • Finding information with OmniSearch
  • Using NHS e-books

There is no need to book for the pocket-sized training courses, just turn up and feel free to bring your lunch.

If you’re a nurse or midwife looking to revalidate, we also offer a Revalidation Reflective Reading workshop, allowing you to gain up to 3 hours of CPD time through pre-workshop reading of an article, and then small group discussion and reflection.

Dates for all our courses are on our library calendar. If you’d like to arrange some one-to-one training, please feel free to contact our helpful library staff in either of our libraries.

Searching for articles in Medline that are about the UK

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There may be times when you wish to search for journal articles that are set in a United Kingdom context, or look at UK populations or practice. This can be quite difficult to do as even UK journals and authors may publish articles about other countries' practices, and articles about UK practice may not make it explicit in the title or abstract that they are about the UK.

Recently, a search filter was published in the Health Information and Libraries Journal by Lynda Ayiku et al of NICE that attempts to locate any articles that are about UK research, populations or practice in Medline, and exclude others.

The search filter is validated, meaning it has been tested against a gold standard set of references to make sure it works. The full search filter was designed for the Ovid version of Medline, but unfortunately does not work properly in the HDAS interface used by the NHS. However, there is a simplified version available, which we have adapted for use in the HDAS interface, and this can be copied and pasted into the search box on HDAS, and then combined with your subject search (uisng 'and') to filter your search to UK articles only.

Simplified search filter for use in HDAS interface

(exp "UNITED KINGDOM"/ OR ("national health service*" OR nhs*).ti,ab,aa OR (english NOT ((published OR publication* OR translat* OR written OR language* OR speak* OR literature OR citation*) ADJ5 english)).ti,ab OR (gb OR "g.b." OR britain* OR (british* NOT "british columbia") OR uk OR "u.k." OR united kingdom* OR (england* NOT "new england") OR northern ireland* OR northern irish* OR scotland* OR scottish* OR ((wales OR "south wales") NOT "new south wales") OR welsh*).ti,ab,jn,aa) NOT ((exp AFRICA/ OR exp AMERICAS/ OR exp ANTARCTIC REGIONS/ OR exp ARCTIC REGIONS/ OR exp ASIA/ OR exp OCEANIA/) NOT (exp UNITED KINGDOM/ OR EUROPE/))

Whilst not quite as good as the full filter, it still has good recall (although it may miss a few references and should not be relied upon for systematic reviews) and may be an easy way to get rid of a lot of unwanted references.

 

Picking the right journal to publish in

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Thinking of writing for publication? Before you submit an article to a journal for possible publication, it is worth considering that not all journals are reputable. Some journals are published by so-called 'predatory publishers' that may ask for payment to peer-review and publish your article, but then don't provide the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals.

Many legitimate open access journals may make a charge to publish (Article Processing Charge) but these will provide a proper peer-review, editorial and publishing service and your article will be properly published and usually indexed in relevant subject databases (assuming it is accepted!).

It is worth visiting the thinkchecksubmit website, that has a useful checklist to follow to check the trustworthiness of a journal.

These include questions such as:

If you're considering publishing an article, it can also be useful to look into which journals have the highest impact factors in your subject area. If you're interested in finding out journal impact factors, please contact Jason Curtis in the Shrewsbury Health Library on 01743 492507.

What is 'green open access'?

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Green open access (sometimes also called self-archiving) is where a copy of an article is deposited by an author in a repository, with the permission of the publisher. Repositories can be institutional (most universities have one, along with small number of NHS Trusts) or discipline based.

Institutional repositories are a good way of demonstrating the research work being carried out in an organisation, and of making that research available to others.

Many publishers support the idea of green open access, but what is allowed to be deposited is usually not the final published version, but may be a preprint, or the peer-reviewed postprint.

Finding out which journals allow green open access can be carried out by searching for the journal in the SHERPA/RoMEO database. If the journal is listed, it should give the policies of the publisher towards depositing a copy, and which version of the article can be used.

Locating open access articles held in institutional repositories is a little more tricky. Many will be found by carrying out a search in Google Scolar, but along with non-open access articles. There are however, a number of specialist search engines that cover institutional repositories, such as BASE and CORE.

Shrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries already collate details of articles and other publications produced by staff in the Trust in our Staff Publications Hub, and nationally work is being carried out as part of the Knowledge for Healthcare programme to look at creating an NHS institutional repository to make open access articles more widely available.