Get career advice from the RCN

The Royal College of Nursing has produced a series of videos giving guidance on careers and employment issues. They are full of useful advice which give you information about your employment rights and how to get the best out of your career as a nurse. Watch them here.

Don't drop out, drop in!

Are you struggling to access good quality information? Do you rely too much on the internet for assignment references? Are you stressed out by how to reference? Are you confused when your lecturer tells you to do a 'literature search'? If you have answered 'yes' to any of those questions, then drop in with the librarian! Here are some forthcoming dates and locations in May and June...

Friday 27th May - Butterfield library
Friday 27th May - Bevan Library, Bedford Hospital
Friday 3rd June - COMET Library, L&D Hospital
Wednesday 8th June - Oxford House library

If you would like any more information we'd love to hear from you! Also see our web page here http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/guides/subjectguides/health/dropin

Look forward to seeing you soon,

Best wishes
Janine

NHS Evidence is changing

If you haven't already used NHS Evidence, you really should be. It's a fantastic search engine, managed by the NHS. It's super-easy to use and here's why you should be using it: everything in it has been reviewed for quality, reliability and authority. The bonus factor is that NHS Evidence also pulls together documents from all the sources you would otherwise have to search separately, such as NICE, Department of Health, Clinical Knowledge Summaries, and so on.

Take a look at the video here.

Critical appraisal of research

A lot of students are working on assignments which require a critical appraisal or critique of a research article. If you are not sure what critical appraisal is and why it is important, have a read of this article in the Nursing Times and this one from Bandolier. If you have never carried out any critical appraisal before and you are wondering where to begin, there are lots of resources to help you.

Firstly, have a search of the library catalogue for books about nursing research. Many of these have handy checklists to work through when carrying out a critical appraisal.

Secondly, have a look at at some great websites such as the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine. There are a lot of free resources here to help you.

Thirdly, don't forget to check your BREO unit site. Have a look at your assignment brief and examine any guidance your lecture has provided.

Web-based printing

We are trialing a wireless based printing service called EveryonePrint that will allow students and staff to send print jobs direct from their PC, Mac, laptop, or mobile device via a web interface or email attachment to the PCounter printing system.

The url is http://webprint.beds.ac.uk and users will need to login with their usual network username and password.

There is a simple browse function and supported files are Office files, PDF and text files. At present JPG, GIF etc are NOT currently supported so it will be necessary to place them in (for example) a Word document first.

Submission via email allows any file attachments to be submitted automatically to webprint@beds.ac.uk after an initial email registration process. Multiple email addresses can be used.

Once the job is submitted the user is presented with a choice of either mono or colour print queue and the option to print multiple copies or duplex. Options such as multiple pages as with Powerpoint will need to be printed in the conventional way from the software on a normal student / staff PC.

The print job, if successful will be processed and placed into the normal PCounter queue, ready for collection in the normal way.

The trial is operating until the end of March and we would really like to hear what you think of the service, so please send any comments to library.technical@beds.ac.uk

Mental Capacity Act Resource

The Social Care Institute for Excellence has developed an excellent resource with loads of information about the Mental Capacity Act. If you haven't seen it already, take a look here.

New mental health strategy launched

Earlier this week the Government launched 'No health without mental health', a new mental health strategy for the UK. The strategy outlines six objectives to improve outcomes for people with mental health issues. The six objectives are:

1. More people will have good mental health

2. More people with mental health problems will recover

3. More people with mental health problems will have good physical health

4. More people will have a positive experience of care and support

5. Fewer people will suffer avoidable harm

6. Fewer people will experience stigma and discrimination

The strategy outlines assessment criteria and responsibilities of the various stakeholder groups. If you are a mental health nurse, you need to know about this strategy.