May 2008

Information helps us to kick bad habits

The King's Fund has launched a programme of work to investigate what the NHS can do to improve the public's health.

See the Kicking Bad Habits section for more.

The programme will look at

• the impact of financial incentives


• the effectiveness of targeting low socio-economic groups


• the role of information-led strategies


• the impact of personal skills, capabilities and confidence to change


• strategies for identifying and targeting interventions

Thermal injuries on children

The NSPCC has published guidelines for clinicians to assist in identidying scalds and burns which may be the result of abuse.

See more information, and download the advice here.

This advice is one of a series produced by the Welsh Child Protection Systematic Review Group. For their other projects and publications, see the CORE-INFO website.

How can you rate the quality of evidence?

There are a number of different systems in place to help clinicians to rate the quality of evidence that they find. The BMJ this month promotes one such system - Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE). This is the system which the BMJ asks its authors to use.

You can read the article, after signing in with your NHS Athens account, here.

Or find out more about the GRADE system on their website.

National Library for Public Health

The National Library for Health's most recently launched specialist library is that for Public Health. This new website is designed to be the best source of information and evidence for those working in the public health field.

See the Public Health Specialist Library here: www.library.nhs.uk/publichealth

The Public Health Specialist Library is kicking off with an Obesity Knowledge Week.

The Public Health Specialist Library is one of over thirty specialist libraries produced by the National Library for Health. Each one focuses on a particular area, offering guidance, evidence and expert information on a clinical topic, a type of health service, or a specific group of patients.

New to the Cochane Library

The new issue of the Cochrane Library is now available.

The Cochrane Library is the best source of excellent quality clinical evidence - from systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials.

For more information and help on using the Cochrane Library, try:

the Cochrane Library's help page

the Stockport Multidisciplinary Education Centre Library's runs training sessions

one of these short videos (in English, and seven other languages)

NICE Guidelines for April 2008

In April 2008, NICE published six pieces of Guidance:


Allogeneic pancreatic islet cell transplantation for type 1 diabetes mellitus

Colitis (ulcerative) - infliximab

Interstitial photodynamic therapy for malignant parotid tumours

Intraoperative red blood cell salvage during radical prostatectomy or radical cystectomy

Perioperative hypothermia (inadvertent)

Rheumatoid arthritis (refractory) - abatacept

The Guidance on abatacept promoted responses from a number of groups.

To keep up to date with newly published NICE guidance, click here.

Clinical Knowledge Summaries gets a new look

Clinical Knowledge Summaries is produced specifically for the NHS, and provides clinical information that is up-to-date, reliable and easy to use.

On the new site, launched at the end of April, you'll be able to quickly find clinical information and information for patients, as well as seeing what new topics have been published.

In addition, you can access DynaMed directly from the CKS page, and even find out how to access CKS on your mobile device.

What do staff think of working in the NHS?

The Healthcare Commission have published the results of the 2007 NHS Staff Survey, which had responses from over 155,000 people.

There were a number of positive outcomes:

• Staff were very positive about the support they receive from immediate managers
• More staff say they receive appraisals
• Staff are working less overtime and have good access to flexible working options
• Staff have opportunities to take up training or education through work
• There are fewer staff saying they saw errors or near misses and an improvement in the number who say it was reported

But:

• Staff are generally satisfied with their jobs, but do not feel valued by their trust
• There are encouraging signs of improvement in infection control but more needs to be done to make hand-washing equipment available
• Staff still report high levels of violence and abuse, but training in this area has improved
• Communication between staff and senior managers is poor
• Many ambulance staff do not think vehicles are safe to work in
• Some staff say the patients are not the top priority

To find out how staff in Stockport replied, view the summaries of replies by Trust, or by PCT.

What does the internet look like?

PLoS Medicine recently had an image of the connections made by the internet on it's cover.

PLoS Medicine is an high-impact, open-access, general medical journal, accessible free of charge to anyone in the world. The journal is one of several published by the not-for-profit organisation, the Public Library of Science.

Click on the image for more information about it.