SWB Library and Knowledge Services provide a number of services to its staff and students in the Trust. We have adopted a nationally validated Impact toolkit to survey our users who use our services and resources. We send users an email if they have used the library service to request articles or evidence searches, received training or have received support for another project that has helped their work.

We also interview some users to get a more in depth look at how the library has helped them and below are the case studies we completed in 2019 – 2021.

“A necessary and phenomenal service and I am grateful for all the work you guys do.”

“We were very keen to have literature searches so that was tremendously useful. I think as a trust we contributed to the trials so we can be reasonably proud.”

“I am very happy with the library service and I think one of the things I am keen to do is to integrate you guys more. When we get the research club up and running one of the first talks is going to be from you guys on how we best utilise what you guys offer”.

Derek Connolly, Consultant Interventional Cardiologist and Head of Research and Development

“The results of the search massively contributed to my CPD as it was a brand new role”. “I was able to contact patient safety staff from other trusts from the articles and now share new information I receive from KnowledgeShare every fortnight. I look forward to my bedtime reading.”

“I run my own table top discussions and am able to create action plans that the wards can put into place.”

“The impact of the search was immense and pivotal to my new role.”

“It has had such a good impact within the directorate it is now being looked at to have similar roles in other directorates within the trust.”
Jo Thomas, Matron, Patient Safety Quality & Governance, Medicine & Emergency Care

“Really helpful. I don’t think people appreciate the Library Service and the things that you offer. So supportive, all of the articles I asked for you got for me which was fab.” Jenny Mynett, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Rheumatology

 

“I think it has also given me new knowledge as well on areas that I possibly didn’t have. I suppose with knowledge you gain confidence in your practice so it makes you that much more confident to do your job.”

“Once you have done a literature search you gain loads of knowledge because you have read the literature that is relevant but then you also pick up on things that will kind of change your practice, new things that you didn’t really know. I think it did reduce risk and improve safety because I am now putting a policy into place for my pessary ladies which wasn’t there previously.”

“Personally I would say it has been a very invaluable service for me and it has saved me so much time and effort. Also I think I have learnt a lot as well about how to do a literature search because I have come to you a couple of times in the past over the last three years and I have asked how to do them and you have shown me and I have thought, I don’t know what I am doing here so I have learnt how to use the library effectively and actually it is not just about books and it is a whole world and the library service is for us as employees as well and I think it has been invaluable.”

“I would just like to thank you all really because I actually didn’t know what the service was or could deliver for us. I always talk about this service and if I go on a course somewhere like at university and say use your library they are brilliant and they can do this, this and this and they can go through things with you and they can do all this stuff so don’t just think that they are just there for books and they are there as a service and they deliver knowledge and they can do a lot more than just that.”

Monica Quinlan, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Urogynaecology

“I think it ticks all of the boxes so it was good for confirmation of prior knowledge, refreshing memory, gaining new knowledge. I thought the literature searches were very in depth, broad yet focused. It did help me generate new ideas and improved confidence. It saved a lot of time for me that was a big factor in it and helped me focus on the submissions. It has possibly saved me up to 30 hours, something like that.”

“I did think that they absolutely facilitated discussion, facilitated collaborative working because most of the projects were in teams, definitely improved the quality of patient care just because of the effectiveness and how fast we were able to obtain such a high quality evidence base which would have taken us longer to acquire.”

“The impact of the service received has been absolutely brilliant, all the staff members have been extremely approachable, quick, very good communicators, timely responses and timely, organised literature searches that help and they have already been referenced which has been such a time saver.”

“I think that the service and the staff are absolutely wonderful and I am really grateful to have the service at SWBH.”

Vijaytha Muralidharan, Medical Registrar

“Everything we do from a research perspective is with the focus of improving outcomes for the patients, for us it is improving outcomes for patients with MSK conditions. Has it done that yet? No probably not but it is all part of a project of work so it will have an impact at the end. My research is looking at benchmarking outcomes for MSK patients so all of those systematic reviews have been put together now and will help inform a standardised data set and then once we have a standardised data set that could be used potentially nationally that people sign up to and all collecting data in the same way that we can pool it we can then audit it and look at where is the best practice happening, who has the better outcomes, what is the cost of their service, why is this service not costing anymore doing better for their patients than we are. That is when we can start driving the quality improvement.”

“Something that I would really value personally from the library is support with statistical software and packages and potentially training/statistics support generally whether it is a person or package whether it is online training and R&D and the library coming together on that as at the moment we can’t put SPSS or StatR on our laptops even if we have got the right software from our institution it feels very restrictive. Could we have computers in the library that could have the software on and could be used by people wanting to use statistical programs etc. It is important for a vast amount of clinicians who are trying to analyse data. A big part of my research is trying to improve us using routine, real world data to inform what we do, observational studies, research etc and the wider that is the more we should be involving more people with being able to analyse big data sets and understanding it.”

“I have got 3 publications out of it so that is a good way of showcasing how that information has been used from my PhD perspective so successful completion of 3 systematic reviews. All have been published now.”

“It has certainly saved me an awful lot of time in terms of working with you to do the searches. And confidence and you have done it in a robust fashion that it could be repeated and you could evidence it and present it in the right fashion. I think you could say hours were saved.”

“I can demonstrate the impact very easily in the publications so if you can complete a systematic review and get it published that basically deals with the fact you have done it in a robust fashion because the publications have been peer reviewed. That review of the evidence has been peer reviewed and has been accepted as evidence and can now been used by lots of people working in that area to inform their practice.”

Roanna Burgess, Consultant Physiotherapist/ Musculoskeletal Service Lead

“I am undertaking a masters as well and despite having always supposedly done literature searches, I used to do the traditionally nursing way of finding one article and cross referencing but you have taught me how to do it properly. I have realised how much you can miss doing it that way.”

“I would say it has saved me hours, huge amount of hours because I think I asked for about 50 neutropenic sepsis articles so it saved me a huge amount of time. And very quickly it is turned around, in 48 or 72 hours as well which is amazing.”

“You have definitely improved the quality of patient care, if we can improve compliance with neutropenic sepsis patient care has to improve, you have probably saved lives by helping us so definitely informed our decision making that we are doing the right thing and we have got the evidence for what we are doing.

Definitely reduced risk and improved safety and I would also say you have saved money because if we can treat patients within the hour we are shortening their stay in hospital and that has got to be saving money. Anything that shortens the time that patients are in hospital has got to be good for the service but also for the patient.”

“I was absolutely terrified when it came to doing a literature search for a research project and you helped me find my feet and gave me the confidence to go away and do it myself and you helped me get a really good mark in my module which was fantastic and one of the comments was an excellent repeatable search and that is down to you. So you have helped me personally, you have helped my professional development but with also with what I am doing is also going to help improve the safety and the care of patients going forward and you have contributed to that big time.”

Sarah Wiltshire, Lead Nurse Haematology and Oncology

“So, as a whole, they did help me to have a better understanding of a number of pieces of work which I was working on to make a more informed decision. There are examples we can learn from other Trusts. And then for future planning, the more knowledge that we have gathered that helps to make a better preparation for the next project or next piece of work. Because, like I said before its similar type of business that we are running. To understand what they have done, how successful they are or they aren’t Its always useful so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel or repeat the same mistakes.”
Essie Li, Head of Transformation

Impact Stories from 2018 – 2019