Avian influenza (bird flu) resources

Leicester City Council, according to a story in the Leicester Mercury of 22nd December, are putting up notices to ask the public to report dead ducks and other water birds.  This follows bird flu on a poultry farm in Lincolnshire some days ago.   Some brief notes about useful resources about avian influenza seems timely.

Leicester City Council's information, including how to report, is here.   Check your local council, of course, if you are not in Leicester!

Then look at UK Government information.  This will tell you the latest situation, about restrictions on movement, and gives advice for the public.  The site confirms that the farm is affected by the H5N8 strain.    Note added 5th January 2017 - there is an update from the UK government here.

There is no suggestion that I have seen that humans are affected, here in the UK or elsewhere in Europe (there have been cases among birds elsewhere in Europe).   So, purely on a "just in case" basis, therefore, I mention Public Health England's information on symptoms, diagnosis and management, and epidemiology, last updated earlier in 2016.

For more news on avian influenza, see news from CIDRAP, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.  It does report cases from Europe, so will give you a wider picture.  It reports cases beyond Europe, as well, of course.

Another site for a global view is PROMED-Mail.  Look at the news feed on the left of the page, and click an item for more detail.   You can use the map to find information about infectious disease cases by location.  A larger map is here.

UHL appears in the Altmetrics Top 100

Altmetrics is a way to measure impact of an article.  It counts the number of times an article is mentioned on social media, in the news, or on blogs.

The Altmetrics Top 100 is the list of the 100 articles that have got the most attention in 2016.

I am grateful to my colleague Selina Lock at the University of Leicester Library for spotting that number 22 in the list is a paper with a co-author from UHL, Roger Kockelbergh in Urology:

Hamdy, F.C., Donovan, J.L., Lane, J.A., Mason, M., Metcalfe, C., Holding, P., Davis, M., Peters, T.J., Turner, E.L., Martin, R.M., Oxley, J., Robinson, M., Staffurth, J., Walsh, E., Bollina, P., Catto, J., Doble, A., Doherty, A., Gillatt, D., Kockelbergh, R., Kynaston, H., Paul, A., Powell, P., Prescott, S., Rosario, D.J., Rowe, E. & Neal, D.E. 2016, "10-Year Outcomes after Monitoring, Surgery, or Radiotherapy for Localized Prostate Cancer", N Engl J Med, vol. 375, no. 15, pp. 1415-1424.

The paper is open access. 

There is more about Altmetrics on our Writing Club blog.

Watch out for predatory publishers - Writing Club Blog Post

Keith Nockels, Clinical Librarian at UHL, has written a piece for our writing club blog on 'Predatory Publishing'.  Your thoughts and experiences of this would be welcomed.

Are clinical researchers publishing via Open Access?  Is there pressure to do this from funders?  Are clinicians being targeted by predatory publishers and are they using this route to publish their research?

https://uhlwritingclub.wordpress.com/2016/12/12/watch-out-for-predatory-publishers/

Awareness Days

It is December. The lights are up. The decorations and the displays in the shops and all around are all designed to increase our awareness of one message: Christmas is coming.

In the same way, health awareness  months, weeks and  days are geared  towards educating the general public, fund raising  and supporting  people with certain health conditions as well as their loved ones.

The awareness weeks and days for December are:

• Ø  Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness Week (December 1-7)
• Ø  World AIDS Day (December 1)

Evidence suggests that information requests from the public around topics of awareness increase during these awareness days and weeks. Consequently, clinicians and practitioners might be looking for medical updates and evidence in these areas.

A good place to look for information on Crohn’s and Colitis is Crohn’s & Colitis UK.  The Trip database also has a host of primary researches and systematic reviews.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and British HIV Association (BHIVA) have published guidelines on HIV testing. Public Health England has also published Reports about HIV in the UK. 

 The NICE Evidence search has not only provided NICE guidelines on these topical issues but also gives access to top quality and Impartiality publication and reviews.

Other useful information about the World AIDS day can be found on the World AIDS Day website, Terrence Higgins Trust, BASHH and Aidsmap.

New HDAS: combining and deduplicating results from multiple databases

What's the best way of doing this in the new HDAS? In the old HDAS I would simply combine results from different databases using the de-duplication button (assuming the total number of results was 500 or less). The deduplication wasn't perfect, of course, but it was a good start and I could then pick out the results I wanted to keep from the more or less de-duplicated list.

In the new HDAS it seems that I have to add results from the different databases to "Saved Results", de-duplicate from there (mostly by scanning through an alphabetical ordering of the titles) and then pick out the results I want to discard. There doesn't seem to be a way of selecting a few search results and exporting just those ones. The process is more time-consuming because:

·         as far as I can see the maximum number of results which can be added to "Saved Results" in one go is 100, i.e. the maximum number of results which can be viewed on one page

·         I now have to tick all the results I want to discard rather than ticking the ones I want to keep (perhaps my search strategies are deficient but I usually end up discarding more search results than I keep)

 Written by  Paul Lee (Assistant Librarian, Reay House Library, Lambeth Hospital)                                                                             

New HDAS training for UHL staff

Message for University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust staff from UHL Libraries & Information Services

Many of you will have used the Healthcare Databases which are provided to NHS staff by NICE. This service provided access to the main healthcare bibliographic databases and are our recommended way of searching databases like Medline, Embase, PsychInfo and British Nursing Index.

NICE have recently launched a new version of these databases. While all the same information is still available, the search page has been completely redesigned and some of the features work in a different way.

Help and support

Library: We are offering some times for people to come to the library and have a quick demonstration of the new database system. Times over the next 3 weeks are:

Monday 31^st October at 10am or 2pm: Library Training Room, Education Centre, Leicester General Hospital

Tuesday 1^st November at 10am or 2pm: Library Training Room, Education Centre, Glenfield Hospital

Wednesday 2^nd November at 10am or 2pm: Odames  Library Training Room, Victoria Building, LRI

Monday 7^th November at 10am or 2pm: Odames  Library Training Room, Victoria Building, LRI

Tuesday 8^th November at 10am or 2pm: Library Training Room, Education Centre, Glenfield Hospital

Wednesday 9^th November at 10am or 2pm: Library Training Room, Education Centre, Leicester General Hospital

Wednesday 16^th November at 10am or 2pm: Library Training Room, Education Centre, Glenfield Hospital

Thursday 17^th November at 10am or 2pm: Library Training Room, Education Centre, Leicester General Hospital

Friday 18^th November at 10am or 2pm: Odames  Library Training Room, Victoria Building, LRI

If you cannot make any of these session, and require assistance, or a demonstration, please book on our ‘Literature Searching’ training session, which covers this resource. Times and dates for these courses can be found here: www.uhl-library.nhs.uk/training. You can also come and ask us for advice or assistance. We’ll be happy to assist you however we can.

Quick guide: A quick guide to using the basic functions of the new search interface is attached. It is also available on our web site. This guide has been produced by NICE.

Video guide: NICE have also produced a series of short videos to assist users with using the new search resource. These videos are available on their YouTube channel:   www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRbwbc3dfXUO3IYIun-5ICK-Q059JXtgk

World Thrombosis Day

This was last week.  But the issue has not gone away, so blogging about it now is not too late!

Lots of names for aspects of the topic - venous thrombosis, venous thromboembolism, VTE, deep vein thrombosis, DVT, pulmonary embolism.   Searching NHS Choices for thrombosis links to resources about many of these, and each page links to information about causes and treatment, as well as information on trials and personal stories.

World Thrombosis Day itself has a page of resources.   This includes information about the the global burden, hospital associated VTE and about research into public awareness.   There are campaign materials, including a list of research articles for health professionals (although the Clinical Librarian Service would be pleased to conduct a specific search for you).   Under Campaign Materials there are also personal stories.

The International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis is involved in World Thrombosis Day, and it publishes the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis (some content freely available, some needs a subscription).

Other resources include:

British Committee for Standards on Haematology - guidelines on thrombosis, accessible via the BCSH site but also through NICE Evidence Search, which will also help you locate guidelines from other organisations.

Using NICE Evidence Search will help you find NICE guidelines, but NICE's Pathway on venous thromboembolism gives an overview of NICE guidance and links to publications.

Clinical Knowledge Summaries includes deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and DVT prevention for travellers.   All are written for primary care, so do not cover prevention or management in hospital.  

E-Learning for Health - Available now with your OpenAthens account

e-Learning for Health (e-LfH) is a Health Education England Programme in partnership with the NHS and relevant Professional Bodies providing high quality e-learning resources free of charge for the training of the NHS workforce across the UK.

Content is presented using various templates such as ‘real-life’ scenarios, case studies and ‘knowledge bites’.

You can access the resources here: http://portal.e-lfh.org.uk/OpenAthensDiscovery

Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS)

This week is SADS Awareness Week.   SADS is a heart condition, often hidden, which can claim the lives of young people and can affect people while taking part in sport or exercise.

SADS Awareness Week is an annual event and this year includes a Marvellous Medicine talk on responding to SADS, another about sudden cardiac death in sport, and a Friday Forum for UHL staff to raise awareness of SADS. 

For UHL colleagues, the intranet, InSite, has for more about SADS Awareness Week.

Joe Humphries, a local lad, tragically died at the age of 14 while jogging, with no prior symptoms, and the Joe Humphries Memorial Trust works to promote research and education.

For more information about SADS, try these:

• Patient.info's page for health professionals page about Sudden cardiac death.
  
• Information about British Heart Foundation’s research into SADS, with a link to a booklet for families who have lost a member to SADS.
  
• Cardiac Risk in the Young, a UK based support organisation.    and SADS UK.   CRYs booklets about the underlying causes of sudden cardiac death and information for families who have lost a member are here.
  
• SADS UK, another UK based support organisation.  Their information about the underlying cardiac conditions that can cause SADS is here.

The causes listed by SADS UK are:

• Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricle Dysplasia (ARVD)
• Brugada Syndrome
• Catecholaminergic Polymorphic Ventricular Tachycardia (CPVT)
• Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM)
• Long QT Syndrome (LQT)
• Short QT Syndrome
• Wolff Parkinson White Syndrome (WPW)

Try a search of NHS Choices or NICE Evidence Search for a cause to find more.  If you work at UHL, the Clinical Librarian Service can search the literature for you.  Please contact us if we can help.

Fault affecting the BNF and BNFc apps

We have become aware of a fault affecting the British National Formulary and British National Formulary for Children apps on some Apple devices. Some content may be out of date. 

NICE’s advice is to uninstall the app and then reinstall it from the App Store, and we would strongly recommend you do this with both apps. 

Android devices and all web versions of the BNF are unaffected. 

If you have an NHS Athens username, you can use the BNF and BNFc apps.  For information about NHS Athens and about the apps, please contact any UHL Library or the Clinical Librarian Service.

Understanding Health Research - A tool for making sense of health studies

This resource created by Glasgow Uni with MRC support and helps with critical appraisal.

Understanding Health Research was supported by the population Health Sciences Research Network, funded by the MRC

Developing Understanding Health Research involved many different steps and input from a wide range of people involved in creating, communicating and using health research. Together, we identified the need for a resource for both lay and professional audiences in the form of an interactive, web-based tool that does not require any prior scientific knowledge. The aims of the tool are to:
allow lay and professional audiences to understand how to assess the quality of research evidence
raise awareness of what evidence is and how it is generated
teach or reaffirm critical health literacy skills

The tool was developed iteratively through continuous testing and feedback with a variety of audiences. We aim to continue to refine and evolve Understanding Health Research to make it as useful as possible.

If you have any feedback on how to improve the Understanding Health Research tool, please contact us.

Source: http://www.understandinghealthresearch.org/

HLG Scarborough Spa 2016

Following my trip to the lovely Scarborough Spa last week, I will try to capture some of my thoughts about the Health Libraries group (HLG) conference 2016.

Prolific Tweeting occurred; with Philip Barlow @hammerslibrary reckoning about 1600 tweets were generated with the hashtag HLG2016. My storify could only hold 1000, so this list is incomplete but might give you a flavour: https://storify.com/HannahBeckitt/twitter-does-health-libraries-group-conference-201
HLG 2016 was an extremely well-organised event, so congratulations to Sarah Hennesy, Imrana Gumrha, Novus and everyone that contributed. As you would expect, there were plenty of opportunities for both social networking and serious thought-provoking professional discussion. Knowledge for Healthcare featured highly, which may have been less relevant to non-NHS attendees, however many of the workstreams and resources generated from K4H are transferrable.


Some overall messages from the 2-days:
· STP’s are the only game in town and we need to engage with them in order to have our work on their agenda. Find out which STP you are part of and start promoting yourself as a service that can bring in the evidence, and demonstrate our value to them.
· Use the new toolkits (e.g. Impact Toolkit, Talent Management Toolkit) that K4H have produced and give feedback. Provide your own case studies to enable the profession to shout about the work we do.
· Succession planning is important to ensure we have a workforce for the future. A second NHS Leadership course will be offered shortly. Roles are diverse and certainly not just admin, even though that is how we are categorised in NHS ESR!

Some highlights:

Current Awareness:
Ben Skinner and Helen Bingham discussed duplication of current awareness services and the work that K4H Task and Finish group have done to address this. They found that 700+ bulletins of varying quality are produced and many have similar topics such as dementia, end of life. Added to the ‘embarrassing’ amount of duplication, is the problem of users not receiving them.

Repeatedly ‘one size does not fit all’ was championed, and various platforms were identified as already in use: KnowledgeShare, CASH, Netvibes, Protopage, North West Horizon Scanning. Most of us forgave some of our lunch break to see a demonstration of KnowledgeShare from Ben Skinner, which seems like a useful tool for current awareness, managing training and organising literature search requests - it would be good to know how much this resource costs. The CASH website will be having a facelift, and is free to join and contribute.

The Task & Finish group concluded that they needed to come up with a range of options to cater for different services. In the coming year, they have 2 aims:
1) Improve collaboration by creating a sharing portal, and promote schemes that already exist
2) Improve quality by developing some ‘good practice’ guidelines
In order to cater for different service needs, a portal via the K4H blog will have 5 strands: Best practice; Find a scheme; Find a bulletin; Find a collaborator; Share with pride.

Many people in the room seemed negative about providing a current awareness service, and this is perhaps understandable given how time-consuming it can be with little feedback as to its impact. At University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust we have been working hard to engage with our clinicians to find out what they want and to try and obtain data regarding usage and impact. We are currently using Mailchimp to send out our Evidence Updates and would welcome any collaboration with others who use Mailchimp.

NICE Evidence Search 
Fran Wilke and Michael Raynor delivered a really interesting session looking at the ‘train the trainer’ or student champion programme. This allows NICE to cascade search skills through a student trainer who then trains their peers in using the NICE Evidence search platform. Michael describes NICE Evidence search to students as ‘a Google for Health and Social Care’ but it is not designed to find primary research, it is more of a ‘point of care’ tool, or a synthesis of evidence. Fran highlighted the training materials page on the website: go to ‘About NICE’ – ‘Communities’ – ‘Library and Knowledge’ - ‘Training Materials’.

Disseminating ‘lessons learned’ bulletins with Tracey Pratchett - 38 feedback responses from about 600 recipients of this bulletin which focuses on an aspect of patient safety such as duty of candour, never events and insulin errors.

Measuring the quality of literature searches with Elaine Garrett - Surveys are notoriously hard to get responses, casual feedback is a no no….could comparing your own search to a gold standard be a way of measuring the quality of your searching? Elaine compared hers to The Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology ‘Green Top Guidelines’ which are a gold standard guideline.

“Access denied”? Accessing published professional information within the NHS in England
Catherine Ebeneezer’s research project into NHS IT systems restricting access to websites and published professional information. ‘IT staff should be at pains to avoid blocking the good when attempting to prevent the bad’ it seems this is rarely the case however! There is also research to support the notion that staff accessing personal websites while at work can have benefits in terms of morale and work-life balance.

Writing for Publication with HILJ Editor Maria Grant
Top Tips:
· Try to match the readers expectations (such as to inform practice or gain new ideas/ inspiration) with the writers’ expectations.
· When writing, keep the question ’So what?’ in your head.
· Look at the author guideline for whichever journal you are trying to publish in. This shows a commitment to publishing in that journal.
· Don’t try to include everything you learned, report on a clearly defined area.
· Be clear about the question you are trying to answer.

Bishop and Le Fanu Memorial Lecture - PT your brain - The benefits of exercise on mental health with Gareth Allen from Woburn Coaching
Really interesting and enlightening presentation from a British Triathlon coach who delivers exercise programmes to alleviate symptoms of mental illness and promote well-being.

Q & A with Nick Poole (CILIP) and Sue Lacey Bryant (Health Education England)
See Twitter feed #HLG2016

Health Information for patients and the public with Carol-Ann Regan and Sarah Greening
This was a recurring issue across the conference and highlighted as a core priority in K4H. The Patient Information Forum (PIF) have resources such as ‘making the case’ to help when trying to campaign for this as an NHS library and information service. The task and Finish group as part of K4H developed an ‘ideas bank’ to help others create and grow this role. 60 % of people with long term conditions struggle to find trustworthy sources of information. Reading Well’s ‘Books on prescription’ is apparently well-known but I have to confess I was not aware of the scheme. It was stressed that this is not an alternative 111, but we do have skills for signposting patients to good information sources.

Carol-Ann has been working on a book which is a self-management tool for cancer patients called ‘So what do I do now’.

Call to get involved with Health Information Week which was originally a West Midlands initiative that is now being rolled out nationally. See http://learning.wm.hee.nhs.uk/node/107 for info on 2016 event which took place 4-10th July.

Value and Impact Toolkit with Susan Smith and Doug Knock
Great online resource for trying to evidence our impact. Presenters asked us NOT to change the wording on the tool, as the language used is based on robust evidence. The Task and Finish group are hoping for lots of case studies that demonstrate our value and impact, and want to eventually compare data across the country. This is a call to action, and the creators would like feedback on this evolving project.

Scarborough Spa itself is an amazing building, tired in places, but full of grandeur, interesting rooms and heritage. It was great to be away from the motorways and busy cities that usually play host to ‘easily-accessible’ conference venues…. Just a shame that the sun didn’t shine, especially during the fire alarm evacuation!

The monthly #UKMedLibs twitter chat held on 20th September was HLG2016-themed and the transcript will be available here.

Useful Sepsis Resources

It was World Sepsis Day on Tuesday 13^th September so there has been a lot of awareness-raising and promotion around sepsis in our Trust. We put together a list of useful resources around sepsis earlier in the year and thought it would be worth sharing these in case anyone else finds them useful.

Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) – Sepsis pages http://www.ihi.org/topics/Sepsis/Pages/default.aspx

Includes information on bundles and tools

JAMA Sepsis/Septic Shock Collection

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/collection.aspx?categoryid=5903

Content includes articles, some are free full text, otherwise contact your librarian for how to obtain copies.

The UK Sepsis Trust

http://sepsistrust.org/

Includes information for both the public and professionals

CDC – Sepsis pages

http://www.cdc.gov/sepsis/

Includes clinical guidelines and tools, data resources and quality improvement links

UpToDate – Various topic reviews

http://www.uptodate.com/contents/search?search=sepsis&sp=0&searchType=PLAIN_TEXT&source=USER_INPUT&searchControl=TOP_PULLDOWN&searchOffset

Full access will depend on local subscriptions - Athens login required for UHL staff

Royal College of Physicians - Acute care toolkit 9: Sepsis

https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/guidelines-policy/acute-care-toolkit-9-sepsis

Surviving Sepsis Campaign

http://www.survivingsepsis.org/Pages/default.aspx

The Surviving Sepsis Campaign is a joint collaboration of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine committed to reducing mortality from severe sepsis and septic shock worldwide.

Report on the International Clinical Librarian Conference. 13-18 May 2016, Toronto, Canada

Mosaic was a joint meeting of the Medical Library Association (MLA), the Canadian Health Libraries Association/Association des bibliothèques de la santé du Canada (CHLA/ABSC), and the International Clinical Librarian Conference (ICLC).

The synergy of all three groups meeting together and the new format for the meeting produced the largest number of abstract submissions in the history of the MLA annual meeting, and this in a year when most MLA members would find travel difficult because of having to bid for funding for an international event.

Sarah Sutton, Clinical Librarian from University Hospitals of Leicester has provided a report on this exciting event and the presentations she attended, to give us a taste of MLA 2016. As she highlights, Point of Care Tools were a popular topic along with Clinical Decision Making. Read More Here

http://www.cilip.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/report_on_mosaic_hlg_2016.pdf

Medline and Cinahl strategy for chronic kidney disease

I devised this, gathering ideas from a number of sources, including suggestions made when I asked lis-medical, and from more suggestions made when I posted a draft there.



The syntax is for the (English) NHS HDAS interface and will work in both Medline and Cinahl, as the subject headings are the same.  However, it may need amending for Embase.   

1.            ((endstage or “end stage” or established or chronic or progressive) adj1 (renal or kidney) adj1 (failure or disease* or insufficienc*)).ti,ab

2.            (Chronic adj1 nephropath*).ti,ab

3.            (“Chronic uremia” or “chronic uraemia”).ti,ab

4.            (CKD or CKF or CKI or CRD or CRF or CRI).ti,ab

5.            (ESKD or ESRD or ESRF).ti,ab

6.            kidney diseases/ and chronic.ti,ab

7.            exp Renal insufficiency, chronic/ 

8.            Renal insufficiency/ AND chronic.ti,ab

9.            1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 or 8

Why the need for so many search terms?   An article by Hsu and Chertow explores the ambiguity in the use of disease terminology in nephrology, as discussed on this blog post elsewhere.


(The original post stated this needed amending for Cinahl.   I amended the post in March 2018 when I discovered it did not and also removed two stray full stops which caused a problem if copying and pasting the strategy).

UHL Writing Club

Evidence Updates from UHL Clinical Librarian Service

A reminder of the Evidence Updates that we produce, and can be found on our website  or follow us on Twitter to find out when a new one is published @UHLCL

We now design and distribute these via Mailchimp, allowing us to obtain some 'click data'.  It enables us to see how many people are opening the email, and which content they are most interested in.

Regular places that we search when looking for content include NICE, The Cochrane Library, NHS Behind the Headlines and Dynamed Plus.

We produce regular bulletins detailing the latest evidence and literature in the following areas:

Anaesthesia & critical care Breast cancer Cancer Cardiac surgery Cardiology Children's health Clinical genetics Colorectal surgery Corporate nursing Diabetes Emergency medicine Endocrinology Family planning Gastroenterology Haematology Hepatobiliary Infection control

Neonatal Obstetrics & gynaecology Older people's health Ophthalmology Orthopaedics Pain management Palliative care Patient safety & risk Patient and public involvement Renal services Research Respiratory medicine Rheumatology Sexual health Stroke Strategy Urology Vascular surgery

More about search filters

This follows on from an earlier post about the ISSG Search Filter Resource.

In Medline and some other databases, you can limit a search to a particular publication type, for example, an RCT.  But publication types are not always consistently indexed in Medline, with some references that are RCTs not indexed as such, and some which are not RCTs indexed as if they were.  

Very new references will not have any indexing, so will have no publication type.   They will therefore be missed if you rely on the publication type limit.

So, relying on publication type limits may cause you problems if you are conducting a systematic review and need to find all RCTs on your topic.

A search filter is a search strategy that finds a particular publication type.  For example, this, from SIGN, to find RCTs:

1	Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic/
2	randomized controlled trial/
3	Random Allocation/
4	Double Blind Method/
5	Single Blind Method/
6	clinical trial/
7	clinical trial, phase i.pt
8	clinical trial, phase ii.pt
9	clinical trial, phase iii.pt
10	clinical trial, phase iv.pt
11	controlled clinical trial.pt
12	randomized controlled trial.pt
13	multicenter study.pt
14	clinical trial.pt
15	exp Clinical Trials as topic/
16	or/1-15
17	(clinical adj trial$).tw
18	((singl$ or doubl$ or treb$ or tripl$) adj (blind$3 or mask$3)).tw
19	PLACEBOS/
20	placebo$.tw
21	randomly allocated.tw
22	(allocated adj2 random$).tw
23	or/17-22
24	16 or 23
25	case report.tw
26	letter/
27	historical article/
28	or/25-27
29	24 not 28

This uses MeSH headings that might be applied to an RCT, but also title or abstract words that might indicate that a study is an RCT.

The ISSG Search Filter Resource links to search filters for retrieving different study designs, and to information about designing search filters.  

If you are doing a systematic search (including, but not only, searches for evidence for systematic reviews), we recommend looking at the ISSG Search Filter Resource.    For advice on search filters, please do contact your Clinical Librarian.

The East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre

Following the report of a national panel, NHS England have made the decision to stop children’s heart surgery at Glenfield. You can read NHS England’s letter and the Trust’s response.

Services need to reach standards about numbers of surgeons, number of operations they each conduct, and which other services are on the same site.  Leicester does not meet all the requirements (but none of the 14 other services nationally do either), and the report believes that we are unlikely to do so. 

UHL believes that the service offered here is high quality, and that forthcoming NICOR data will show that our outcomes are among the best in the country.   The Understanding Children’s Heart Surgery Outcomes site shows that for children aged 0-16, there is no evidence that chances of survival in the hospital are different from predicted.

Closing children’s heart services here will have an adverse effect on paediatric intensive care services here and elsewhere in the East Midlands, and on the ECMO service here, which is nationally very important.   Locally, patients and their families will have to undertake much longer journeys for treatment and care. 

So, there is a campaign at UHL to keep children’s heart services, and all staff receive weekly updates.   Senior Trust staff have met with local and national government and local MPs.  There has been much local media coverage.

The Clinical Librarian Service will help the campaign by locating, if needed, supporting literature or statistics.  I, the Clinical Librarian for cardiology and cardiac surgery, have added the campaign logo (above) to all my emails!

Read more about UHL’s campaign.  There is also a petition to Parliament asking for a public review, which you might like to consider signing.  

Cochrane Clinical Answers

Did you know that The English, Scottish & Welsh NHS license for the Cochrane Library now includes FREE access to  Cochrane Clinical Answers? 

Cochrane Clinical Answers provides brief evidence based summaries on popular clinical questions and links to the evidence from Cochrane Reviews on those questions. 

Here is a link to the Cochrane Clinical Answers on Diabetes, to give you an idea of what is available: Cochrane Clinical Answers Diabetes

The InterTASC Information Specialists' Sub-Group Search Filter Resource

Today I was a bit stuck on a literature search. How should I do a good search to find Black and Minority Ethnic studies. BAME is a popular acronym in the UK but it doesn’t have a gold standard definition or a gold standard search strategy (that I have found so far). So I emailed some UK based health librarian discussion lists as below:

Dear All

I have had searches requested from two different people on BAME aspects of health care. I was wondering if anyone had come across a gold standard search strategy for this and if not, at least a fairly plausible one for me to get some ideas from.

So far I have found these two publications that have some ideas:

http://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-015-0657-2

https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/globalassets/media/documents/policy/policy-publications/june-2013/palliative-and-end-of-life-care-for-black-asian-and-minority-ethnic-groups-in-the-uk.pdf

I will be happy to share my findings with the boards.

I got some great replies and one of them reminded me about a great place to look for searches (or filters or hedges as they also called).

The InterTASC Information Specialists' Sub-Group Search Filter Resource

Sadly it doesn’t include my elusive BAME search strategy, but it does have lots of other great filters and information on how to evaluate an existing filter or produce a new one.

Knowledge For Healthcare - PKSB for Health is launched

Did you know that over the last year the Competencies Task and Finish Group have worked with CILIP to create a version of the Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB) that is relevant to the health setting.


This is being launched today at the CILIP Conference. For more information, and to stay up to date with Knowledge For Healthcare, follow the KfH blog http://kfh.libraryservices.nhs.uk/ and sign up for news alerts.

Recently published evidence updates

The following Evidence Updates have recently been published, detailing the latest evidence and literature:

Breast Cancer
Cancer
Cardiac Surgery
Cardiology
Colorectal Surgery
Emergency Medicine
Infection Control
Neonatal
Nursing
Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Older People's Health
Palliative Care
Respiratory
Vascular Surgery

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter to find out when an evidence update is hot off the press!

Twitter tips: Hashtags

Here are five top tips on how to use hashtags:

• Remember if you're using a hashtag from a public account, anyone who does a search for the hashtag will find your tweet. So, make sure the hashtag is appropriate, professional and relevant.
• Don't use too many hashtags as that's considered as spam. Twitter's Best Practice recommends using a maximum of two hashtags.
• Hashtags can appear anywhere in your tweet, not just at the end of your tweet.
• Find interesting tweets on a topic and profiles to follow by searching for a hashtag topic in the search field.
• Create your own hashtag by simply putting the hashtag symbol # in front of your topic. When creating a hashtag remember to see if it's already being used first as part of someone's marketing campaign, competition etc.

We hope you find these tips helpful. Catch up on all our tips here.

Recently published evidence updates

The following Evidence Updates have recently been published, detailing the latest evidence and literature:

Anaesthesia & Critical Care
Cancer
Cardiology
Children's Health
Diabetes
Emergency Medicine
Endocrinology
Haematology
Hepatobiliary
Ophthalmology
Pain Management
Patient Safety and Risk
Renal Services
Research
Rheumatology
Strategy
Urology

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter to find out when an evidence update is hot off the press!

CISS Officer achieves ACLIP status

Congratulations to Hannah Beckitt, one of Leicester's Clinical Information Search Service Officers, who has achieved certification from CILIP. Hannah had to submit a portfolio of evidence to show how she's developed in accordance with CILIP's Professional Knowledge & Skills Base (PKSB) at personal, organstional and wider professional level. Well done Hannah for all your hard work!

Librarians take up the challenge

The Krafty Librarian suggests we test out systematic review literature searches. This could be a good activity for a group meeting of Clinical Librarians. Everyone take a SR literature search and replicate it before the meeting, then feed back on your findings at the meeting. Like me you might have found some great searching ideas this way, and also like me you might have been surprised at the brevity of the search. Time to address that aspect now perhaps!

Post by Sarah Sutton.