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