Clinical Librarian Study Day, GETEC, 8th May 2009

Last Friday was the Clinical Librarian Study Day: Strength in Depth. A summary of the day is available on our web site.

Our Keynote Speaker, Andrew Miniuks, Head of the Content and Quality Directorate for NHS Evidence spoke to us about the new search engine. He told us that one of the main aims in designing NHS Evidence was to define "what does good look like?" Customisation of the site is set to launch later this year. Andrew said that NHS Evidence want to understand how advanced users like clinical librarians assess the performance of the FAST search engine (the new NHS Evidence main page search) relative to the current Healthcare Database Advanced Search (HDAS or Search 2.0).

The plan for NHS Evidence is to run a user feedback-driven evaluation, so it seems like it's up to us to let them know exactly what we think.

NHS Evidence doesn't want to own the content of the results that the search engine retrieves. Each provider of evidence is accredited according to their criteria, and the plan is to re-accredit providers every 3 years. NICE were also put through the accreditation, so no easy ride for them, apparently.

The Panel Discussion featured Sarah Sutton (SS), Clinical Librarian, Andrew Miniuks (AM) and David Stewart(DS), Director of Health Libraries for North West Health Care Libraries Unit. The question of what was going to happen to the NHS Core Content resources now was asked, and AM replied that at the moment that was uncertain, but hoped for an answer by October '09. DS stated that the SHA Library Leads (SHALL) don't want to see a return to regional portals for electronic content.

AM also said that NHS Evidence would be tracking 0 hits results on the database to see why they may occur.

SS stated that NHS Evidence should really be put on every Trust's intranet pages if the NHS want users to use it instead of Google.

Another delegate asked about the workstreams that might be lost now that the National Library for Health no longer exists. DS answered that the SHALL group was planning to pick up as much of the work on the National Service Framework for Libraries, the Process Costing Framework, alerting service etc. as possible. SS then asked if SHALL is now the "mothership" for NHS librarians, and DS said yes.

AM also informed us that NHS Evidence are working on a better marketing strategy. There is an "Ambassadors' Pack" which apparently says that NHS Evidence is "no longer FOR librarians", but Linda Atkinson pointed out that the National Library for Health was never FOR librarians either, it was a LIBRARY. The general consensus of the audience was that NHS Evidence should not forget that we are their best marketing tool, and their most expert users, so alienating librarians would be a very bad move.

The following sessions Clinical Librarians: Variations a theme presented 5 different models of Clinical Librarians. These presentations are all available on our web site. Ann Daly's presentation on her model based in an acute Trust also has a very true-to-life video on it which is worth watching. Lyn Wilson is a Patient Information Librarian which sounds like a really rewarding and challenging role, and with her library's geographical position at the entrance to the hospital, a really valued role too! Stephen Ayre presented to us the organisational approach taken at his Trust, and the way in which he works closely with the Trust's Audit team. The PCT Commissioning side of things was presented to us by Richard Crookes, and his searches for "Exceptional Case Reviews" on non-commissioned treatments sounded really interesting and as though they can make a real difference for individual patient care. Hélène Gorring presented on the role of a Clinical Librarian in a Mental Health Trust which had had fabulous feedback from the clinical teams.

The two workshop sessions were in the afternoon. The first, "What are we missing?" which I facilitated along with Janette Camosso-Stefinovic, was about the different sources we use to answer clinical (and sometimes non-clinical) queries. I've written this up and added it to the study report, as well as adding the web sites mentioned to the presentation.

Louise Hull is currently making sense of the notes from the second session on search filters and as soon as she's done so I'll make sure it goes onto the web site.

We've had some really good feedback on the day, as well as few ideas for how to improve for our next study day!