Fancy some UpToDate training?

 

All Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust staff now have access to UpToDate courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood Healthcare Library. "What is UpToDate?" I hear you say. UpToDate is an electronic evidence-based clinical decision making support tool, written by expert clinicians for clinicians. It is designed to help answer clinical questions quickly, increase clinical knowledge and improve patient care... sounds pretty good right? You can access UpToDate from the intranet home page or remotely with an NHS Athens account.

We want the staff in this trust to be make the best possible use of this excellent resource so we have set up a drop-in training session on Friday 2nd May for anyone to attend. The session will be held in the library training room and staff are free to drop-in at any time between 12 and 3pm. If you have absolutely no experience using UpToDate but want to see what it's about or if you've used it in the past but want to learn a bit more, come along and we'll show what it can do for you.

There's no need to book just pop in and bring your lunch, we've also got a hot drinks machine in the library if you fancy a coffee.


Our lovely little training room

If you want any more information on this session or on UpToDate in general please do contact us, always happy to help. Likewise if you're unable to make this date but would like some training. We'd be more than happy to arrange training for individuals or groups, either here in the library or in your department.

As a special treat here's some impressive numbers of what UpToDate contains:

380,000 - References

27,000 - Graphics (including Graphs, Charts, Flow Charts, Photos and Videos)

10,000 - Clinical Topics

5,100 - Drug Monographs

5,100 - Authors and Editors

1,500 - Patient Information Leaflets

135 - Medical Calculators

21 - Specialities (more on the way!)

Right that's it for the sales pitch, look forward to seeing you there on 2nd May.

Until next time...

Drop-in training sessions

"Hmmm... maybe I'll just 'Google' it!"

I think it's fair to say clinical staff have a really tough time trying to keep appointments that are not absolute necessities. Things can change pretty quickly on the wards. One minute you've got a free half hour to do some CPD and before you can switch on a PC it's all changed and you're rushed off your feet. We as library staff do not know this from first hand experience of course, but we're reliably informed this is often the case.

Keep a look out for the poster

We also know from various discussions with various people that many staff members working on the wards would like to know more about accessing the online resources. It's all very well and good us telling you all about these things but unless you know a) where to look and b) how to use them, it's not really a lot of use to you is it?

So how do we resolve the issue of supplying the demand for training whilst knowing that staff's spare time can be a fickle thing?

One idea is to hold informal 'drop-in' sessions in our training room. We'll open the room up for 3 hour slots and let you guys pick a convenient time to pop in and learn how navigate yourself around the labyrinth of online resources. Feel free to bring your lunch and a coffee with you.

In these sessions you can find out how to search the databases (Medline, CINAHL, BNI etc.) and get access to online journals.
You can discover Anatomy TV, learn how to use UpToDate and see how BMJ Learning works. If you just want to come along and get help with registering for an Athens account, we can help with that too.

Dates and times for sessions are as follows, these dates are also available on the calendar at the bottom of the blog page. Details can also be found on the poster in the library and on 'Post IT':

• 14th March 10am - 1pm
• 2nd May 12pm - 3pm
• 13th June 10am - 1pm
• 11th July 12pm - 3pm
• 26th September 10am - 1pm
• 14th November 12pm - 3pm

If none of these dates are good for you, but you would still like some training, please contact us. We're always happy to arrange either one-to-one or group training, in the library or at a place suitable for you.

Until next time...