Electronic Learning. Welcome to the Future, We have flying cars!

Hullo!

 

This is the fourth article I am writing in as many weeks. So far the reception has been extremely positive, with a couple of people mentioning they liked the articles whilst in the library, and even a comment on last week’s article! Thanks Anonymous, you’re a swell guy/gal.

Reiterating the end of last week, please never feel afraid to get in touch and let me know about how you feel about this series. As the weeks pass I’d like to tailor it to what you want to hear about, and that can’t happen without me knowing what you like.

Big fan of the eye-candy in last week’s article? He’s married; I’ll have to check with his wife if you want more of that. Missed last week’s? Here it is!

Want more features? A quiz? I have a lot of useless knowledge, but then when I read quizzes on other websites they always seem lame. Maybe not.
Want dessert? Well finish your greens then young man/lady! It’ll put hair on your chest.

I think you get the picture. If there’s something you want me to ramble on about for about 400 words or so , let me know and I’ll try and fit it in.

 

So anyway, to todays topic. Electronic Learning Resources. (ELR)

ELR come in a myriad of forms. E-books, journals, online access, forums, apps, databases (Databi?)

We provide access to all of the above. Except Databi, which isn’t a word, let alone a service. We do have databases though!

As I have mentioned before, our physical journal collection is pretty expansive, giving you that book smell when you open any one of our 407 titles we have in the flesh. That’s not counting the online access you have when mucking about on Open Athens (our service provider). Anyone want to guess how many you get?

You’re very quiet, you need to shout at the screen, I won’t be able to hear you otherwise.

Ok, please don’t shout at the screen, especially if you’re reading from a computer on the cardiology ward.

The final total, including e-books comes to a mind boggling One Hundred and Fourteen Thousand, Four Hundred and Thirteen.

Oh my.

That looks like 114,413 in numbers.

And it costs you the princely sum of £0.00, payable in monthly instalments*

*APR 3.4%, sum payable within 12 months or your home may be repossessed

*Gasp*

Pretty good for nothing right? Come on down and see us on how you too can hold the wisdom of ages in your palm, and laugh like some kind of omnipotent being.

 

UpToDate!

That’s right, we subscribe to UpToDate, which is so good, it has capitalised letters strewn through the title.

I’ll wait for you to get up off the floor after swooning at this latest revelation.

Done? Good. Mop your brow, you look a state. Just kidding, you’re beautiful. All my readers are as beautiful as my own non-existent children.

Anyway, tangent aside, I guess I should tell you about UpToDate (it’s a pain capitalising every other letter in that word) UpToDate is a clinical evidence based search tool that can be used by clinicians and hospital staff to find quick and relevant information on any one of 10,000 topics and counting.

The way it works is the company running UpToDate have a crack team of experts working round the clock researching the methods that have the most clinical evidence to back them up. Want to find out techniques for amputating someone’s leg? They’ve done the research so you don’t have to.
The best thing about it though, is certainly the fact it’s evidence based, and current. No more searching through dusty tomes for the most potent rum to administer when performing an amputation, although if you’re still doing that, I wonder that they let you have a stethoscope.
We recently performed a survey which many of you may have participated in. Here is some of the anonymous feedback that we received.

“(UpToDate) provides key learning in one site allowing improved efficncy of my time”

“An invaluable resource for this Trust. Each of us should probably use it even more, it is a great resource particularly for areas outside one's own specialty and to check other matters. It is not advertised sufficiently. Do all the junior staff know of it? It would be as serious loss of we did not have it.”

So pretty positive. I only chose two because I don’t want this article to go on too much, but as the second reviewer suggested, it really is a powerful tool in the medical professional’s arsenal. If you don’t use it already, try giving it a look, you can find a direct link on the SDH intranet homepage on the right. If you do use it already, great!  Maybe recommend it to your colleagues. They will thank you for it. And then you get to be that person who knew about something before it was cool. Everyone loves that person.

 

That’s all for this week!

Until Next Time…