News

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

6 ways OmniSearch makes searching easier

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Our OmniSearch facility has undergone a few changes recently, and is now even more powerful. Here are 6 reasons why.

1. You can now search books and e-books at the same time

2. You can even search books, e-books and articles at the same time!

3. Books, e-books and articles are now searched using WorldCat Discovery, offering you new features such as book covers, citation tools, and easy filtering of results

4. The Article search finds articles in Medline, PsycARTICLES, ERIC, PubMed Central and the Cochrane Library so you don't have to search individual databases

5. The Evidence tab allows you to search Trip Database for various types of evidence (such as guidelines, systematic reviews or evidence summaries), the Cochrane Library (for systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials), BMJ Best Practice (for summaries of evidence) or the BNF/BNFc (for prescribing information)

6. Searches are carried from one search tab to the next so you can repeat the search in different resources quickly

For more information, visit our new OmniSearch guide.

Keep up to date with the latest COVID-19 evidence

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We've just published the latest edition of our COVID-19 Evidence Bulletin, detailing the latest evidence, guidance and other resources to support the response to the pandemic.

This issue includes guidance from NICE on 'long COVID', and resources to support vaccinations.

The libraries are remaining open during the lockdown and there is no need to book ahead – you can drop-in, browse the shelves, use the IT and study individually. If you need to access the libraries when we are unstaffed, you may wish to arrange 24/7 access.

We have put measures in place to keep you and our staff safe – please read and observe these during your visit.

Get the latest tables of contents from your favourite journals

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The KnowledgeShare service now offers you the ability to receive tables of contents for a wide range of healthcare journals.

The contents list of your chosen journals will be sent out once a month in a single email (so you won't get lots of separate emails). You can up by using the Evidence Updates form.

Any journal that is indexed in PubMed can be added to the tables of contents service, but unfortunately not all journals will be available if they are not included in PubMed.

It's an easy way to receive the latest contents from healthcare journals, but we also offer access to the Read by QxMD app as well, where you can also get details of the latest articles by following your favourite journals, keywords or collections.

Librarians give health professionals the 'gift of time'

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We know that all healthcare professionals are short of time - time to be confident you have the most relevant, evidence-based information you need.

A recent report to an All-Party Parliamentary Group commissioned by HEE, Library and Knowledge Services Value Proposition: The Gift of Time, clearly outlines the true value of NHS Library and Knowledge Services having both a direct and indirect effect on the care patients receive. They make a positive impact on services as a whole, providing an economic value of millions of pounds to the NHS.

Health librarians and knowledge specialists make the gathering of information as easy as possible for you, relieving the burden of sourcing and synthesising evidence while enabling NHS organisations to meet their statutory obligations to get evidence into practice across the service.

Findings in a recently published international literature review suggest a return of £2.40 for every £1 spend on NHS library and knowledge services.

Patrick Mitchell, Director of Innovation and Transformation, Health Education England, said:

"This report gives us some truly great insight into the value that embedded NHS Library and Knowledge Services bring to staff at all levels of  the healthcare system when planning and delivering care for local people."

What is medRxiv?

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medRxiv (pronounced med-archive) is one of a growing number of preprint servers where articles can be freely shared prior to peer-review and acceptance by a journal. It is jointly owned by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), Yale University and BMJ, and was launched in 2019.

medRxiv covers medical, clinical, and related health sciences and accepts research articles (including systematic reviews and meta-analyses). It doesn't accept material such as narrative reviews or opinion pieces. 

Because the material submitted to medRxiv is unpublished, it's not indexed in databases such as PubMed until the article is later peer-reviewed and published in a journal. Preprints in medRxiv can however be found in Google and Google Scholar very quickly after submission.

When it comes to fast-moving topics such as COVID-19, preprint servers can make new research available very quickly, and reduce research waste from duplicated efforts and non-reporting. However, they can also add to the spread of poor-quality or misleading research due to the lack of peer-review, and should be used with care.

As medRxiv makes clear on each article's detail page:

'This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.'

medRxiv does do some screening checks on submitted articles, such as checking they are research-based, and checking for plagiarism and defamation. A researcher in a relevant field will check the basic content and organisation of the article, but medRxiv does not review a manuscript’s methods, assumptions, conclusions, or scientific quality.

If you intend to publish a research article, note that some journal publishers may not accept articles that have already been made available on a preprint server, so it's worth checking the policies of any journals you intend to submit the article to.

Further reading

Confused by Medical Terminology?

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Are you regularly working with medical terminology but not medically trained?  Are you sometimes confounded and bamboozled by medical terms and doctors’ jargon?

Your Health Library can help!  We have a selection of books on medical terminology, explaining how conditions and treatments get their names, as well as the Latin and Greek components that are used to create them. Splitting the word into its parts very often makes it so much easier to understand – and to type too!

Confused by PHEOCHROMOCYTOMA?

PHEO-                   means dusky

-CHROMO-           means colour

-CYT-                      refers to a cell

-OMA                      a suffix meaning tumour

Visit SaTH Health Libraries today.  We are staffed 8.30 – 17.00 Monday to Friday.

OR join the library online

Make the most of Twitter by using Tweetdeck

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Tweetdeck is a free desktop tool provided by Twitter that can make using Twitter easier and more effective. Tweetdeck allows you to see multiple columns on one screen (so no more switching views) and also allows you to manage multiple accounts which can really help if you manage a departmental account as well as your own.

There is no need to create a separate login, and you simply use your Twitter login details.

Columns in Tweetdeck can consist of your timeline, saved searches, Tweets from list of people on a topic, notifications, your 'liked' Tweets and more.

 

Search for journal articles 'on the go' with the EBSCO Mobile app

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The new EBSCO Mobile app allows you to search for journal articles in a range of library databases, and access full-text where available. The databases available to NHS users include Medline, CINAHL, and the Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, so there's a good coverage of healthcare topics. Many of the articles will have full-text available with a single touch.

Once you’ve downloaded the app, click 'Get Started', select your institution, and then login with your NHS OpenAthens account. The app will keep you logged in for 30 days.

You can also create a free personal account to save liked items (use the heart icon to save them) and synchronise these with the EBSCOhost desktop version for reading later. If you're logged into a personal account, the app will keep you logged in and retain your saved articles.

Searches can be filtered by date (using the dropdown menu, you can select the past 1,5 or 10 years) and when you click for more details, the app will check whether full-text is available. Unfortunately, there is no means to sort results by date.

Whilst the search functions are quite basic, it makes doing a quick search easy, and because it can synchronise with a desktop account it could be a handy way to find some good articles to like and read later on a bigger screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stay ahead of the latest journal articles with Read by QxMD

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If you're looking for an easy way to see the latest articles in your favourite journals or on keywords of interest, Read by QxMD can help.

It's an app and website that tracks articles in healthcare journals and alerts you to new ones matching your interests. More than that, it can make finding the full-text easy as it links to our journal holdings, or locates open access copies. The app version can store your NHS OpenAthens account details - no more logging into OpenAthens each time you want to access an article!

It's free to create a Read by QxMD 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.

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

Bust that medical jargon!

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Doctor Jargon - A new game available to borrow from Telford Health Library.

Practice communicating without using jargon!

It is all too easy to assume that patients will understand medical descriptions and technical terms but they are often just left bamboozled and confused, and are too embarrassed to ask for clarification. This game gets you to practice busting that jargon and explaining conditions and  treatment  in normal everyday language without slipping into those medical terms you use with colleagues.  Work as individuals or in teams to describe medical terminology without using key jargon and specialist language.

Can you describe MEASLES without using the words VIRUS, FEVER, IMMUNISATION, CONTAGIOUS  or CONJUNCTIVITIS?

How would you describe ECHOCARDIOGRAPHY without mentioning ULTRASOUND, CARDIAC, DOPPLER, VALVE or DIAGNOSIS?

Why not try it in a group of colleagues or at an update meeting - a fun way to practice good patient communication skills.