Specialist Services

Knowledgeshare – latest information straight to your inbox

Overwhelmed by information or not sure how to keep up-to-date? We can provide you with bulletins and notifications of the latest research and publications in your field.

Targeted notifications

Our KnowledgeShare notifications are highly personalised and targeted to you.  Focusing on the evidence that will change practice, and the latest publications on quality, safety, education and the patient experience, our aim is to bring you what you need to know and no more.

KnowledgeShare is an online web-based current awareness system that is NHS OpenAthens password protected. We will create a profile of you in the system, detailing your interests. These interests can be broad (e.g. learning disabilities) or more specific (e.g. dyslexia). To KnowledgeShare we add guidelines, policy documents and a wide range of summarised evidence so that you will not be inundated with primary research articles. You have the option to make your contact details and interests visible to all members of KnowledgeShare in order to promote knowledge sharing and networking, or alternatively you can restrict your details to just being visible to library staff.

We can usually supply to library members, electronically or via the internal post, any articles listed which are not freely available online.

To register for this service, please click HERE. On completion of the form, please return to library either by email or in person.

Literature Searches

The library can conduct literature searches for library members; if you cannot access the databases you need or have insufficient time to do your own search. This service is primarily available for clinical need and work-related research. This service is not available to students, although help in searching databases will be offered.

Information skills training

The healthcare library service offers specialist information skills training for those eligible. Details of popular training offered are given below but further topics to support information skills are available on request. Training is free and open to all NHS staff employed by Weston Area Health Trust and staff employed by organisations where an SLA exists. To book a place or arrange tailored training sessions contact the library

Literature Searching and accessing journal articles:

This training session explains the different procedures required to locate journal articles with a known citation and how to find journal articles on a topic. The majority of the training session will cover basic and advanced literature searching techniques. The session will cover systematically planning a through literature search (including PICO, keywords, synonyms, truncation, wildcard, phrase searching, Boolean Operators and limits). The differences between keyword and MeSH/Thesaurus searching will be demonstrated across a range of health and social care databases (such as BNI, CINAHL, MEDLINE, HMIC, PsycINFO, Social Care Online and Cochrane). Staff will be shown how to locate the full text of journal articles from a database search, and the session will finish by outlining the benefits of citation searching, hand searching key journals and locating grey literature.

Critical Appraisal
This training session will cover what critical appraisal is, the benefits of critical appraisal and what the key features of critical appraisal are. The different levels of evidence within health research will be outlined and delegates will be shown how to access and use the different critical appraisal checklists (e.g. CASP checklists). The session will also cover the key points to consider when critically appraising randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews and qualitative research.