Quality and Productivity Specialist Collection launched

NHS Evidence specialist collections aim to provide access to the best available evidence. From them, you can link to the latest guidelines, systematic reviews and research in your area of interest.

A new specialist collection has just been launched, providing a central resource for evidence on how to improve quality and productivity in the NHS.

Visit the website for more information

RCP - Guidance on antibiotics is too specialist for most doctors

18 Nov - Existing guidance on the management of some infections may be too long and complex for many doctors to have time to absorb, according to the Healthcare-Associated Infections (HCAI) Working Group at the RCP. The group have now produced a handy one-page summary of guidelines to help busy doctors identify what is most important for them in their routine clinical practice. The Effective Antibiotic Prescribing Top Ten Tips aims to help doctors use antibiotics safely while protecting their patients and public health. In order to prevent a rise in drug-resistant bacteria, doctors should prescribe the shortest course of treatment that is likely to be effective and antibiotic policies should be based on local data, in addition to national and international information, to help detect patterns of resistance in bugs. Commenting on the new guidance note, the Chair of the RCP’s HCAI Working Group, Professor Jon Friedland said: “Antibiotics are essential to modern medicine and may be life-saving, but their abuse leads to resistance. Doctors are ideally placed to take the lead on managing infection control promoting best practice, sharing knowledge and ensuring that the understanding of infection and antibiotic prescribing are a mandatory part of training.” © Royal College of Physicians of London

• Effective Antibiotic Prescribing Top Ten Tips

NICE seeks outstanding NHS professionals for its new Fellows and Scholars programme

5 Nov - NICE is launching the new Fellows and Scholars programme, aimed at providing more chances for NHS public health and clinical professionals in England to work with NICE. The new programme will create opportunities for NHS staff to undertake projects and work with the Institute to improve the quality of care within their local health communities. A wide range of staff, including public health and allied health professionals, doctors, nurses, and health service managers, are encouraged to apply. © National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
· Full press release
· NICE Fellows and Scholars

PubMed redesigned

This week, a new design for PubMed has been launched.

Library staff can offer you training and advice on how to make the most of the redesigned database, contact us on info.skills@medsch.ucl.ac.uk

Major consultation on the successor to the RAE

HEFCE has published a consultation, on behalf of the four UK higher education funding bodies, on the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The REF is the new process for assessing research in UK higher education institutions, enabling the selective allocation of funding. It will replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

For further information see the HEFCE website.

UpToDate now available in the library

UpToDate is now available from one of the walk-in computers in the library - ask at the issue desk for the login for Walk-in PC 1.

UpToDate is an electronic resource providing detailed answers to clinical questions based on the best available evidence. It is written by clinicians and covers more than 7,700 topics in 14 medical specialties. If you are looking for high quality evidence to inform your clinical practice, come to the library to see if UpToDate has the answers.

New current awareness website available: Clinical Reader

A new current awareness website has just been launched to help you keep up to date with the latest research. The site is still in beta form, which means there may be more improvements to come.

http://clinicalreader.com

The site describes itself thus:

"At this moment, high impact research and health news articles are scattered across hundreds of sites. That´s far too much for any reader to follow.Welcome to Clinical Reader, a truly quality collection of accessible clinical, scientific and health literature aiming to ease information delivery to the medical community. Focus your time, discover new links, fine-tune your online experience in a bid to effectively manage online clinical browsing. Our regularly updated content features the latest articles from high impact factor and popular journals, health news sources and prime multimedia content. Headlines are swiftly visualized and seamlessly linked to abstract or full content articles to keep our community aware of current research, trends and analysis. Login with Athens to further enhance your online experience."

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