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Support for Healthcare
Kate Cheney (left) and Betsy Anagnostelis
Work underpinning the Healthcare Support Key Performance Area of the
Library Strategy continued apace in 2012-13. Many successful innovations
were introduced, indicative of the extensive partnership working, some
of which are highlighted below. Service level agreements were confirmed
with partner NHS Trusts.
Service Level Agreements
In 2013 we celebrate 10 years of a Service Level Agreement, which sets out the framework for UCL's library services supporting seven (originally eight) NHS partners. A considerable amount of the work in negotiating the original agreement was undertaken by our colleague Louise Shepherd (1962-2013), formerly Head of Queen Square Library, Archive and Museum.
A Service Level Agreement is additionally in place with the Whittington Health Library, the successor to the Archway Healthcare Library that closed on 31 July 2013. Co-located with the Undergraduate Centre for UCL Medical School in the Highgate Wing it forms part of the Whittington Hub, in partnership with NHS Whittington Health. The Library will continue to support UCL's medical students on that campus, who are enthusiastic about the new space and its computing, book collections and study facilities.
Working in partnership to improve healthcare
UCL biomedical libraries continued to develop and deliver innovative services in 2012-13. Several of these were described in innovation reports that were submitted as part of the annual NHS Library Quality Assurance Framework (LQAF) process. Work by Royal Free Medical Library staff on 'Aligning research publications metrics review with Trust appraisal and revalidation' was judged to be a runner-up in the Sally Hernando Award for Process Innovation. Research publications are now routinely verified as part of the appraisal and revalidation processes, resulting in a database of validated publications for the Trust.
" "A key trust objective is to be in the top ten per cent of hospitals for research and teaching. It is therefore extremely useful to identify our staff publications and use them as a focus of discussion at appraisal. The library staff have provided invaluable assistance in this task."
Professor Stephen Powis, Trust Medical Director
Elsewhere, Library staff at Great Ormond Street were commended for good practice in marketing for a Library video that is used at all Trust inductions.
Support for healthcare practice continued to be a key plank of activity among the biomedical libraries. In a departure from a paper-based model, Library staff at the Royal Free have revamped the way current awareness services are delivered: blogs, RSS feeds and mash-up technologies are now used to create 'Practice Updates', based on content identified by users or departments. A pilot Update for physiotherapists quickly proved popular and interest was such that Library staff were asked to set up Updates for sub-specialties within the discipline. The project was the subject of a successful presentation by Ruth Muscat, Knowledge Resources Librarian, at the CILIP Health Libraries Group conference in Glasgow in summer 2012.
Joint working towards improved patient care underpinned Grazia Manzotti's contribution towards a paper published in 2013.
Grazia, Deputy Librarian at the Friends of the Children of Great Ormond
Street Library, collaborated with Nurse consultant Lindy May to
undertake a systematic review on lipomyelomeningocele, a condition
whereby the spinal cord fails to form properly. Grazia's expertise was
highly valued by the clinical team.
Article reference: May L, Hayward R, Chakraborty A, Franck L, Manzotti G, Wray J, Thompson D. Lack of uniformity in the clinical assessment of children with lipomyelomeningocele: a review of the literature and recommendations for the future. Childs Nerv Syst. 2013 Jun;29(6):961-70. doi: 10.1007/s00381-013-2063-2.
Resources
Queen Square Library began to explore its use of social media in 2012-13, including an 'On this Day' feature at @neurolib. This highlights key events in the history of the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, and associated items in Queen Square Archive, including some surprising entries, e.g. that for November 13th. Both the Twitter and Facebook accounts have a wide range of followers, from academics, students and clinicians (both internal and external to UCL/UCLH) to charities and individual patients and other members of the public.