Registration is now open for ICLC 2017

The International Clinical Librarian Conference (ICLC) runs conferences, targeted at Clinical Librarians and any other health librarian who finds the topics covered of interest.

Register for the 2017 International Clinical Librarian Conference here

21st to 22nd September 2017

Leicester Racecourse
Oadby
Leicester LE2 4AL

The International Clinical Librarian Conference is organised by the Clinical Librarian team at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL) in the United Kingdom.

To find out more information on the UHL team and what they do, please visit their website at www.uhl-library.nhs.uk/cl

Abstract submissions are also currently being accepted:

Submit your abstract for the 2017 conference

Call for Papers for ICLC 2017 - reminder

Hopefully you will have had time to consider over the Christmas and New Year break what sort of paper you would like to submit for the International Clinical Librarian Conference 2017. If you have, then here is the submission form. http://www.uhl-library.nhs.uk/iclc/abstracts.html

Transfusion Evidence Library

This database of systematic reviews, RCTs and economic studies relevant to transfusion medicine is available to the NHS.  It is compiled by the Systematic Review Initiative, an Oxford based clinical research group.

I must admit this is the first time I have used it.    Search terms used in my exploration are in bold.

Areas covered are listed.   The main audience will be people involved in transfusion medicine, but there is material in it of interest to surgeons, critical care specialists and haematologists. 

The search guide gives search tips, and details of how records are found for inclusion.

• Total knee replacement finds 164 records
  
• Phrase searching is allowed, so “Total knee replacement” 90
  
• Boolean is allowed, so total knee (replacement OR arthroplasty) finds 283
  
• Like PubMed, strings of words are AND’ed, so total AND knee AND (replacement OR arthroplasty) also finds 283.

Results can be filtered by:

• Clinical specialty – these include, of course, blood donors, but also haematology and oncology, obstetrics and gynaecology, and surgery.   
  
• Subject area - these include Fractionated blood products (under “Alternatives to blood”) and Management of anaemia (under “Clinical Practice”).
  
• Study design - SR, RCT or economic.
  
• Text availability - TEL links to some publishers and providers like Ovid, but also to things like PubMed Central.

You can apply only one filter from each group at a time.  You can apply filters from different groups together, for example, clinical specialty and study design.  Filters stay applied to searches until you clear them.

Some items (not many in any of the searches I did) have clinical commentaries evaluating quality.

For some searches, you see (at the end of the first page) the expanded query”. This looks like the search that is actually done, but I am not sure.  Sickle cell anaemia does not show an expanded query, where sickle cell anemia does, although both searches give the same number of results. Searching hiv gets the same number as searching hiv OR “human immunodeficiency virus”, and neither shows an expanded query.  For ITP (not the best search in the world!), the expanded query suggests it has searched inosine triphosphate, but the results suggest it has searched immune thrombocytopenia (which is what I was thinking of).   (Using the full name of ITP finds more)

Transfusion Evidence Library looks useful, and I plan to try it out on search requests, where appropriate.  We will be promoting it to our Transfusion team. 

Have you used it?    Please put your thoughts, or anything I have missed or got confused about, in a comment.

Run VT

According to HLWIKI encyclopedia, a Clinical Librarian (CL) provides specialized library services in teaching hospitals and other health organisations by participating in clinical activities and hospital rounds with health providers. By working closely with assigned teams of clinicians, a clinical librarian can respond to information needs that arise in situ within the clinic. This makes them more 'clinic-driven' than 'library-driven'. Furthermore, Clinical Librarians facilitates access to the medical literature to answer the health professionals most-pressing clinical questions; as such, CLs perform, mediate and coach users through the search process and in locating the best medical evidence from the medical literature. Assistance can also extend to locating the full text of documents in print and electronic formats. 

The health education team in western Sussex has developed a You Tube video 
https://youtu.be/2iZz38HOhAg that further highlights the value of a clinical librarian. 

Web resources about dialysis

It is easy to look for information on the web, but not always easy to find useful things.  The vast number of resources, and their variable quality, mean it is useful sometimes to have a list of selected resources, with notes.

For that reason, the Health Libraries Group Newsletter publishes an "Internet Sites of Interest" column, which (declaration of interest!) I edit.

The hope is that the column is a useful place for health librarians to start with new subject areas.   And also a useful thing to share with library users, whether students or practitioners. 

The latest column is a list of sites about dialysis, one of my clinical areas, so I was able to ask them for suggestions.  There are brief notes about each site, and a quick list of definitions. The column (and previous ones) is listed here.  

Please do use and share the list, with (of course) acknowledgement to the HLG Newsletter.

End of self promotion!