Sustaining Transformation by Evidence Mobilisation (STEM)Club in the North East of England

In 2016 Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships were formed across the whole of England, bringing together care providers with commissioners and local authorities to plan local delivery of health and social care. Within this context, a small group of leaders working in broadly “evidence roles” within healthcare in the North East and North Cumbria (NENC), began discussing how those with the skills to support evidence-based practice might be able to better support healthcare decision-making at the system-wide level. The group focussed on the need for cultural change and making personal connections. Rather than provide “evidence products”, our aim was to build relationships between policy and decision makers and those in evidence roles. We agreed that we needed to: Develop a network of local people working in evidence roles in the healthcare field (STEMClub). Link local health library and knowledge services staff (LKS) into the work streams of the Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (now the Integrated Care System). Raise awareness and gain support among senior stakeholders in the ICS, NHS England (NHSE), Public Health England (PHE) and Health Education England (HEE) of the aims of STEMClub. This case study describes our progress to date in developing the network and supporting the work of healthcare decision-makers and policy makers in the North East and North Cumbria.

Introduction

Every CILIP President has a theme. In David Stewart’s Presidential year in 2019, one of his themes was the need to focus on our own evidence base in libraries and therefore research. In the NHS “evidence-based healthcare” has been an important driver for change since the 1990s. Evidence based healthcare led directly to evidence based librarianship and that too has been a powerful agent for change in NHS library and knowledge services. Nevertheless, there is much more to do – the power of evidence needs to be recognised across all our professional groups and we need a much more coordinated approach to its funding, development and dissemination.

Library marketing

In order to attract more non-medical staff, the Sir Thomas Browne Library at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital decided to create a marketing campaign called “Love Your Library.” The campaign sought to make non-medical staff aware of the library’s many services and materials available to them. During the campaign, the library increased the number of new members by 160%, with 25% of these being non-medical members. Future promotions will help create a community hub for staff and achieve a prominent position within the Trust.

Making serious learning easy and fun at OHFT

Learning and knowledge sharing are of paramount importance at Oxford Health Foundation Trust which has recently embarked on a wide scale Apprenticeship program as well as other training courses. Newcomb Library staff piloted the project with an initial purchase of three games and held a Games Day at Warneford Hospital along with other game events. For evaluation, we sent a survey to all team leaders who borrowed the games and phoned a sample of participants. We also collected comments from those attending drop in sessions and loan statistics from our library catalogue. Awareness of the games is evidenced by increasing usage statistics. Responses from the feedback survey were positive. These experiences demonstrate how interactive learning through board games provided by NHS Library Services can improve learning for patients and staff.

Optimising real time clinical librarian support to enhance the evidence base in radiotherapy clinical protocols

Clinical teams are professionally driven to adopt the latest evidence-based care ensuring optimal outcomes for patients. There can be delays in the latest evidence reaching practice. The radiotherapy multi-professional team in partnership with Clinical Librarians developed a lean process to undertake the real-time evidence-based live update of clinical radiotherapy protocols. Principles of Quality Function Deployment were deployed to create a lean process. The process was evaluated for the percentage difference to the radiotherapy protocol parameters over two years. Satisfaction of the live update was scored from 1: Very dissatisfied to 5: Very satisfied. Since 2014, 12 protocols have been through the process. The live update resulted in 80% of differences to the clinical protocol compared to the previous two years. Among 10 respondents, a mode of 5 was scored for satisfaction. This novel approach has been successful in providing a lean process ensuring that the latest evidence reaches radiotherapy practice.