I stumbled across a news item in this week's CILIP Update/Gazette which I wanted to make a note of as I thought it was rather good. A blog post by Guy Daines, CILIP's Director of Policy and Advocacy on the official responses to yet another of the government's White Papers on health and the NHS. This time it was the turn of public health in "Healthy Lives Healthy People" and once more there is no mention of the role of information, evidence-based practice, information literacy, research or the part libraries have in bringing about change and influencing clinical practice. As Daines points out, "it remains important to assert the crucial role librarians, knowledge officers and other information specialists already play in promoting and facilitating an evidence-based approach and how a modest investment in such skills and services can help effect the transformation desired" but as always the question is how best to convey this message to those making decisions.
There are already clear signs the huge plans for the NHS are foundering - perhaps if Mr Lansley had consulted a library professional and had done a bit more background research we wouldn't be in this mess right now....
Showing posts with label information literacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label information literacy. Show all posts
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
Sunday, 24 October 2010
An Information Revolution...without libraries?
The Department of Health’s Liberating the NHS: An Information Revolution consultation document was published on Monday this week (18 Oct 2010) and lays out a strategy for the way the NHS should manage information in the future. As Andrew Lansley quite rightly states in the Foreward of the document, “we must not lose sight of the primary purpose of information in the health and care system: to ensure that every patient and service user receives high quality care” (p3). All well and good but the term “information” in this document is somewhat nebulous, used as an umbrella term for everything from patient records to health websites to audit to evidence. Furthermore there is no mention of libraries or library services anywhere in the document apart from a reference to the “Indicators for Quality Improvement library” (p36) which I for one have never heard of.
While the bulk of An Information Revolution is concerned with patient records and the flow of medical data there are certainly a number of areas where libraries are involved or could be involved. Section 4.6 states “in order to grasp the opportunities offered by the information revolution, clinicians and care professionals need to be able to access the best evidence (including international evidence) of outcomes, interventions and risks. Evidence needs to be user-friendly, up-to-date and available at the point of care, to inform discussions with patients and service users…Individual professionals, teams and organisations need to be supported to access information of this kind, which can make all the difference in ensuring safety and effective outcomes” (p36) Ummm, yes – do they not realise that this information is already being provided by hundreds of NHS medical libraries across the country every day? There is a short paragraph dedicated to NHS Evidence, described as a service which “is an important addition to commercially provided data services (which are often subscription-based and aimed at particular specialist audiences)” again ignoring the fact that such subscriptions are usually paid for by NHS library services on behalf of their users.
The document strongly supports better access to medical information for patients, which of course is laudable, but takes a rather simplistic view of what is a very complex subject. The emphasis on the internet as a channel for medical information is very obvious but is fairly silent on the subject of information literacy and evidence-based medicine. The three criteria for effective information is that it should be:
- informing, so that they know it is comprehensive and can be trusted;
- engaging, so that they are willing and able to use it; and
- empowering, so that they know how it can make a difference (p11)
How about authoritative, evidence-based, reliable?
The document states that “for some time now, people have been using the internet to explore a diagnosis after (or before) they visit their doctor” (p10) quoting a study of patient use of the internet which showed 11% of patients for neurology outpatients at the Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Liverpool in 2001-5 accessing the internet prior to clinic attendance. 11%?! It’s hardly statistically significant is it? The document also mentions “the role of websites such as ‘Mumsnet’ in generating new ways of sharing insights and information – including health information – is having a lasting effect on our society. Carers, patients, service users, care workers and clinicians are increasingly able to access forums to discuss the issues that matter to them, and offer support from others with experience of their condition” (p10) and exhorts that “the NHS, local authorities and care providers should be responding to and supporting these new approaches” (p11). Now I have been on a few of these forums in my time and have found them pretty useless to be honest, mainly involving somebody complaining they have a strange rash, followed by a slew of respondents all saying they have something similar but nobody knowing exactly what it is or how it should be treated.
Libraries, both medical and public, are extremely well-placed to provide authoritative, reliable information to patients. Many libraries already do and even more would be willing to do so. Why is this not mentioned in An Information Revolution? It may well be that “information cannot be seen as something that is the sole responsibility of the specialist” (p39) but why not harness the knowledge and experience of information specialists such as librarians and avoid reinventing the proverbial wheel?
Finally, I did have to laugh at the statement on page 14: “Whilst any associated costs will need to be met within the Department of Health’s Spending Review settlement, there will be no additional central funding to pay for the information revolution…Whilst there will inevitably be costs, which could fall centrally and/or locally, the information revolution should, ultimately, pay for itself.” Not surprising really that the government thinks good quality information can be produced on the cheap, but it makes the whole document ring rather hollow.
I shall definitely be responding to this consultation document and hope many other medical librarians will as well. After all, there is not going to be an Information Revolution in the NHS without us!
While the bulk of An Information Revolution is concerned with patient records and the flow of medical data there are certainly a number of areas where libraries are involved or could be involved. Section 4.6 states “in order to grasp the opportunities offered by the information revolution, clinicians and care professionals need to be able to access the best evidence (including international evidence) of outcomes, interventions and risks. Evidence needs to be user-friendly, up-to-date and available at the point of care, to inform discussions with patients and service users…Individual professionals, teams and organisations need to be supported to access information of this kind, which can make all the difference in ensuring safety and effective outcomes” (p36) Ummm, yes – do they not realise that this information is already being provided by hundreds of NHS medical libraries across the country every day? There is a short paragraph dedicated to NHS Evidence, described as a service which “is an important addition to commercially provided data services (which are often subscription-based and aimed at particular specialist audiences)” again ignoring the fact that such subscriptions are usually paid for by NHS library services on behalf of their users.
The document strongly supports better access to medical information for patients, which of course is laudable, but takes a rather simplistic view of what is a very complex subject. The emphasis on the internet as a channel for medical information is very obvious but is fairly silent on the subject of information literacy and evidence-based medicine. The three criteria for effective information is that it should be:
- informing, so that they know it is comprehensive and can be trusted;
- engaging, so that they are willing and able to use it; and
- empowering, so that they know how it can make a difference (p11)
How about authoritative, evidence-based, reliable?
The document states that “for some time now, people have been using the internet to explore a diagnosis after (or before) they visit their doctor” (p10) quoting a study of patient use of the internet which showed 11% of patients for neurology outpatients at the Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Liverpool in 2001-5 accessing the internet prior to clinic attendance. 11%?! It’s hardly statistically significant is it? The document also mentions “the role of websites such as ‘Mumsnet’ in generating new ways of sharing insights and information – including health information – is having a lasting effect on our society. Carers, patients, service users, care workers and clinicians are increasingly able to access forums to discuss the issues that matter to them, and offer support from others with experience of their condition” (p10) and exhorts that “the NHS, local authorities and care providers should be responding to and supporting these new approaches” (p11). Now I have been on a few of these forums in my time and have found them pretty useless to be honest, mainly involving somebody complaining they have a strange rash, followed by a slew of respondents all saying they have something similar but nobody knowing exactly what it is or how it should be treated.
Libraries, both medical and public, are extremely well-placed to provide authoritative, reliable information to patients. Many libraries already do and even more would be willing to do so. Why is this not mentioned in An Information Revolution? It may well be that “information cannot be seen as something that is the sole responsibility of the specialist” (p39) but why not harness the knowledge and experience of information specialists such as librarians and avoid reinventing the proverbial wheel?
Finally, I did have to laugh at the statement on page 14: “Whilst any associated costs will need to be met within the Department of Health’s Spending Review settlement, there will be no additional central funding to pay for the information revolution…Whilst there will inevitably be costs, which could fall centrally and/or locally, the information revolution should, ultimately, pay for itself.” Not surprising really that the government thinks good quality information can be produced on the cheap, but it makes the whole document ring rather hollow.
I shall definitely be responding to this consultation document and hope many other medical librarians will as well. After all, there is not going to be an Information Revolution in the NHS without us!
Sunday, 27 June 2010
I like Google but honestly....
After a good start I ended last week feeling a bit like the Katherine Hepburn character from 'Desk Set'. You know, the 1960s film about the reference desk of a large corporation managed by the luminous Hepburn being taken over by a machine called EMMERAC who can apparently answer all the questions thrown at it, rendering the reference desk redundant? (and if you are a librarian and haven't seen this film go out now and find it - it's hilarious and every self-respecting information professional should see it!).
My manager had a telephone conversation last thing on Friday with one of our external funders (who I shall not name as the following is not common knowledge yet) who told him they won't be able to give us the same level of funding this year and may cut us off altogether. Essentially they don't see the value of information skills training - the person in charge of education and development in this organisation claimed she could hire somebody one day a week "to show staff Athens resources" as she put it. Well I would like to see her try squeezing my job into one day a week - I trained nearly 30 people from this organisation in the last 3 months, meaning this person would have to run three training sessions in their one day a week plus all the advertising, planning and follow-up, Athens administration, random queries, people popping by ad hoc, literature search requests...they would be dead after one day on such a job. She also claims that somebody on the board there saw 'information skills training' on the budget and queried it, asking "what do we need this for, we've got Google haven't we?"
Obviously this made me feel really valued and appreciated and it's nice to see those in charge with such a progressive, enlightened view of information literacy! I was (and still am) pretty hurt and angry actually which didn't make for a very nice Friday evening but then I decided no - I am not going to let these people get to me. They are representative of all the work that still needs to be done regarding information literacy. I am the one out there on the ground meeting people every day who need help finding information and I know how much my training is valued. It is just depressing that these people (who unfortunately happen to hold the purse strings) do not and are completely out of touch with what their staff need. Instead of letting their attitudes discourage me I am going to take them in hand and challenge them through the work I do. I am an information professional - cross me at your peril!
Other than that the week went well and I had a very good training session with a lovely midwife on Thursday on staying up-to-date. She was very on the ball and wanted to find out more about RSS feeds and discussion lists. I do tend to cram quite a lot into my staying up-to-date course, but there is a lot out there!
I also had a good chat on the telephone with my colleague at the other hospital in our Trust and we have decided to organise a joint critical appraisal session covering both quantitative and qualitative research for anyone in the whole Trust. We were also talking of maybe trying to run training sessions first thing in the morning - "Early Bird Specials" if you will - with coffee and donuts!
I am also planning on sending out an evaluation form to all my one-to-one trainees from last year til now to find out if they are using the training they undertook and found it useful. Fingers crossed I get lots of positive responses!
My manager had a telephone conversation last thing on Friday with one of our external funders (who I shall not name as the following is not common knowledge yet) who told him they won't be able to give us the same level of funding this year and may cut us off altogether. Essentially they don't see the value of information skills training - the person in charge of education and development in this organisation claimed she could hire somebody one day a week "to show staff Athens resources" as she put it. Well I would like to see her try squeezing my job into one day a week - I trained nearly 30 people from this organisation in the last 3 months, meaning this person would have to run three training sessions in their one day a week plus all the advertising, planning and follow-up, Athens administration, random queries, people popping by ad hoc, literature search requests...they would be dead after one day on such a job. She also claims that somebody on the board there saw 'information skills training' on the budget and queried it, asking "what do we need this for, we've got Google haven't we?"
Obviously this made me feel really valued and appreciated and it's nice to see those in charge with such a progressive, enlightened view of information literacy! I was (and still am) pretty hurt and angry actually which didn't make for a very nice Friday evening but then I decided no - I am not going to let these people get to me. They are representative of all the work that still needs to be done regarding information literacy. I am the one out there on the ground meeting people every day who need help finding information and I know how much my training is valued. It is just depressing that these people (who unfortunately happen to hold the purse strings) do not and are completely out of touch with what their staff need. Instead of letting their attitudes discourage me I am going to take them in hand and challenge them through the work I do. I am an information professional - cross me at your peril!
Other than that the week went well and I had a very good training session with a lovely midwife on Thursday on staying up-to-date. She was very on the ball and wanted to find out more about RSS feeds and discussion lists. I do tend to cram quite a lot into my staying up-to-date course, but there is a lot out there!
I also had a good chat on the telephone with my colleague at the other hospital in our Trust and we have decided to organise a joint critical appraisal session covering both quantitative and qualitative research for anyone in the whole Trust. We were also talking of maybe trying to run training sessions first thing in the morning - "Early Bird Specials" if you will - with coffee and donuts!
I am also planning on sending out an evaluation form to all my one-to-one trainees from last year til now to find out if they are using the training they undertook and found it useful. Fingers crossed I get lots of positive responses!
Friday, 11 June 2010
Information Literacy
Well I've only been back at work for two days as I was on holiday in lovely Wales for most of the week but I thought I would still blog about them as the first day back especially was quite interesting. It was our bi-monthly CLIST (Clinical Library and Information Skills Trainers) group meeting on Thursday and there were quite a few lively discussions which got going over information literacy skills in healthcare professionals today. Two points which I thought would be useful to mention was the fact that nurses are now being expected to do Masters levels qualifications in order to progress in their careers but many are not getting the support they need to carry out this level of education. One of the librarians at the meeting (who has been in the job for a long time) was saying that some of the nurses she has been seeing recently barely have basic literacy skills, much less information literacy. They are brilliant nurses but just don't have the academic background and processing skills necessary to carry out Masters level work. The universities offer very little support and they are having to manage their very stressful day-to-day nursing work on top of the education - it is unfair on them and must be so demoralising. And we health librarians have to pick up the pieces!
Another point was about information literacy in general among staff and a CLIST member made an interesting point that the style of internet searching has changed in recent years. People using the internet in a personal capacity at home do not tend to 'surf' or explore the internet like they did when the World Wide Web first became popular. She was saying that people now tend to concentrate on two or three sites (Facebook, Google, Yahoo email account etc) to find what they need rather than roving through lots of different sites and as a result have become much less certain about the internet 'terrain'. This then translates over to the work situation where people prefer to have one site to find everything they need. But in health and medicine this is just not possible.
Our afternoon session quite coincidentally was on information literacy as well and we had the ever-enthusiastic Susie Andretta of the FILE course leading the session. There were three presentations - one from Richard Thorne of NHS Nottingham City who is leading on public health intelligence course for public health professionals in the East Midlands area, another from Sue Jennings of Lancashire Care Trust who has a very exciting approach to blogging and current awareness bulletins and the last presentation came from Susie herself which asked about whether evaluation of training sessions should focus on the trainer, the user or the organisation. I found the session from Sue the most interesting - she has been using a blog in conjunction with a monthly one page current awareness bulletin with very successful results. The blog (which uses Wordpress) is very impressive - almost like a website on it's own. The most exciting thing is the complexity of the statistics available on Wordpress - you can literally see who is reading what on nearly every part of the blog and the stats are truly amazing. I was inspired but unsure how well it would work in an acute trust - Lancashire Care Trust is a mental health trust so most of the material is concentrated on mental health. I do think it might be an idea to switch our work blog over to Wordpress though (no offense Blogger....)
Today I have been back in the office catching up with my emails and getting back up to speed again. Have a busy week training-wise next week with quite a few one-to-ones. On Monday I am going into town to find out more about the Ovid link resolver and whether it will be the answer to all our link resolving problems. Hmmm, chance would be a fine thing....!
And most exciting of all - I have a new template for my blog! Thanks Blogger - now just get some analytics built in and I'll be well chuffed.
Another point was about information literacy in general among staff and a CLIST member made an interesting point that the style of internet searching has changed in recent years. People using the internet in a personal capacity at home do not tend to 'surf' or explore the internet like they did when the World Wide Web first became popular. She was saying that people now tend to concentrate on two or three sites (Facebook, Google, Yahoo email account etc) to find what they need rather than roving through lots of different sites and as a result have become much less certain about the internet 'terrain'. This then translates over to the work situation where people prefer to have one site to find everything they need. But in health and medicine this is just not possible.
Our afternoon session quite coincidentally was on information literacy as well and we had the ever-enthusiastic Susie Andretta of the FILE course leading the session. There were three presentations - one from Richard Thorne of NHS Nottingham City who is leading on public health intelligence course for public health professionals in the East Midlands area, another from Sue Jennings of Lancashire Care Trust who has a very exciting approach to blogging and current awareness bulletins and the last presentation came from Susie herself which asked about whether evaluation of training sessions should focus on the trainer, the user or the organisation. I found the session from Sue the most interesting - she has been using a blog in conjunction with a monthly one page current awareness bulletin with very successful results. The blog (which uses Wordpress) is very impressive - almost like a website on it's own. The most exciting thing is the complexity of the statistics available on Wordpress - you can literally see who is reading what on nearly every part of the blog and the stats are truly amazing. I was inspired but unsure how well it would work in an acute trust - Lancashire Care Trust is a mental health trust so most of the material is concentrated on mental health. I do think it might be an idea to switch our work blog over to Wordpress though (no offense Blogger....)
Today I have been back in the office catching up with my emails and getting back up to speed again. Have a busy week training-wise next week with quite a few one-to-ones. On Monday I am going into town to find out more about the Ovid link resolver and whether it will be the answer to all our link resolving problems. Hmmm, chance would be a fine thing....!
And most exciting of all - I have a new template for my blog! Thanks Blogger - now just get some analytics built in and I'll be well chuffed.
Friday, 26 March 2010
You've only got one chance...
I often think the most tricky part of my job is knowing what our library users want from a library and information service, especially when it comes to training. Even when I do manage to convince someone they could do with a little information skills training I sometimes feel like I only have one chance to win them over and the best way to do this is to find out what they really need in terms of information to carry out their job. Of course the easiest way to find this out is simply to ask but it so easily slips my mind...the other day a GP came in for a refresher session and just before she arrived I had been battling with Reference Manager (which, btw is the most complicated, unwieldy, user unfriendly reference management program I have ever encountered) and no sooner had she sat down then I immediately launched into my usual spiel about accessing the the databases and building search strategies. After a few minutes the poor woman looked at me and said 'actually I wanted to find out about Map of Medicine...'
Of course you did. And if I had actually bothered to ask what you wanted out of the session before launching into automatic pilot I would have known that. Luckily I managed to recover from the mistake and she went away happy but I came away resolved to be much more proactive about finding out what the user needs first, rather than just assuming I know what they need.
....................................................................................
I did my first 'Critical Appraisal: Qualitative Research' course this week and overall I think it went quite well. Most of the attendees had come to the Quantitative course a month earlier and were quite keen to chip in and share their thoughts and opinions. At the end one of the attendees actually expressed an interest in setting up a journal club, to keep the critical appraisal skills fresh and the others seemed interested in this too. I have no experience of setting up and/or facilitating a journal club but I think it would be quite fun and a way to reinvigorate the Trust's evidence-based practice and build upon the research work already taking place. If anyone has any experience of journal clubs I would be very happy to hear them and will keep you posted on any progress made!
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In other news, I had the supreme privilege and delight of being filmed doing a presentation this week then had to watch it in front of my colleagues and get feedback. This was part of the Facilitating Information Literacy Education (FILE) course run by Susie Andretta at London Metropolitan University, which I have been doing since January. I can highly recommend the course and have learned a great deal from it but this was one of the more stressful weeks by far.
The filming bit wasn't so bad - we were put in front of a camera in a pokey little TV studio at the university but my fellow FILEers made up the audience, so after the initial shock of being in front of a camera I forgot it was there and it was just like giving another presentation.
Watching back later on was much harder and I felt a strange, almost out-of-body experience watching myself on the TV. I realised I spend way too much time looking at the screen, rather than the audience and definitely fluffed more than a few of my lines but all-in-all it wasn't too bad. I looked a lot more confident than what I felt and I didn't talk too fast or too quietly, which I am wont to do. I certainly wouldn't want to repeat the experience but I've definitely learned a lot about my presentation style and will work on my weak spots in future sessions.
....................................................................................
Luckily I had Thursday and Friday off to recover from the trauma. This has been very pleasant but I am rather worried about my reference management training workshop next week, of which I have done barely any preparation for yet...oops! Will report back on how it goes (or doesn't go) next week.
Of course you did. And if I had actually bothered to ask what you wanted out of the session before launching into automatic pilot I would have known that. Luckily I managed to recover from the mistake and she went away happy but I came away resolved to be much more proactive about finding out what the user needs first, rather than just assuming I know what they need.
....................................................................................
I did my first 'Critical Appraisal: Qualitative Research' course this week and overall I think it went quite well. Most of the attendees had come to the Quantitative course a month earlier and were quite keen to chip in and share their thoughts and opinions. At the end one of the attendees actually expressed an interest in setting up a journal club, to keep the critical appraisal skills fresh and the others seemed interested in this too. I have no experience of setting up and/or facilitating a journal club but I think it would be quite fun and a way to reinvigorate the Trust's evidence-based practice and build upon the research work already taking place. If anyone has any experience of journal clubs I would be very happy to hear them and will keep you posted on any progress made!
.....................................................................................
In other news, I had the supreme privilege and delight of being filmed doing a presentation this week then had to watch it in front of my colleagues and get feedback. This was part of the Facilitating Information Literacy Education (FILE) course run by Susie Andretta at London Metropolitan University, which I have been doing since January. I can highly recommend the course and have learned a great deal from it but this was one of the more stressful weeks by far.
The filming bit wasn't so bad - we were put in front of a camera in a pokey little TV studio at the university but my fellow FILEers made up the audience, so after the initial shock of being in front of a camera I forgot it was there and it was just like giving another presentation.
Watching back later on was much harder and I felt a strange, almost out-of-body experience watching myself on the TV. I realised I spend way too much time looking at the screen, rather than the audience and definitely fluffed more than a few of my lines but all-in-all it wasn't too bad. I looked a lot more confident than what I felt and I didn't talk too fast or too quietly, which I am wont to do. I certainly wouldn't want to repeat the experience but I've definitely learned a lot about my presentation style and will work on my weak spots in future sessions.
....................................................................................
Luckily I had Thursday and Friday off to recover from the trauma. This has been very pleasant but I am rather worried about my reference management training workshop next week, of which I have done barely any preparation for yet...oops! Will report back on how it goes (or doesn't go) next week.
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