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.