Contents
Introduction
Welcome from Louise Goswami, Chief Knowledge Officer, Workforce, Training and Education Directorate, NHS England
A warm welcome to the NHS and to your role in NHS knowledge and library services. You are now part of a vibrant and much valued profession that makes a difference in the NHS every day. It’s a truly exciting time to join us and there is no better, or more worthwhile sector of librarianship and knowledge management in which to work.
The NHS sees around 1.3 million people a day and that means millions of decisions and choices are being made by staff, patients and carers, choices that strike right at right to the heart of our lives. You play a vital role in ensuring that these decisions and choices can be informed by combination of the best evidence that we have about clinical care and from the shared know how and the hard-won experience of staff.
There are a wide variety of roles. You might be working directly with health and care staff or you might be in a very technical role. You may spend most of your time searching for evidence or producing current awareness bulletins or you might be based out and about with clinical teams. Whatever your role the work is varied, stimulating, and rewarding.
To help you succeed in your role there are a wide variety of continuing professional development opportunities on offer through the Knowledge for Healthcare Learning Academy. Across England there are 177 local knowledge and library services with around 1200 staff plus our own national team in NHS England. You can benefit from meeting and working with colleagues through local library networks or national communities of practice. You will become part of a fantastic community through which you can share your learning and your skills.
Enjoy your new role and your next chapter.
Why work in NHS knowledge and library services?
Every day more than a million decisions are made in the healthcare sector. As a healthcare librarian or knowledge specialist you will be able to work to ensure as many of those decisions are evidence-based as possible, helping to improve outcomes for patients and save money for organisations.
An independent economic evaluation reported that professionally staffed health knowledge services deliver a cost-benefit ratio of 1:2.4, increasing to 1:3.85 where knowledge managers provide evidence searching and summarising services. This means that for every £1 spent on Knowledge and Library Services in health, £3.85 is generated. Knowledge specialists and health librarians take the ‘heavy lifting’ out of getting evidence into policy and practice and release time for healthcare professionals.
Working in NHS Knowledge and Library Services is varied, interesting, and rewarding. As a healthcare librarian or knowledge specialist you will support evidence-based practice by conducting complex literature searches and horizon scans to support patient care, research, and improvements in health services. You may also develop and deliver information skills training to help health professionals assess and make the best use of evidence.
You will ensure that the best evidence is available to the people that need it, when they need it, to facilitate evidence-based clinical decision making across your organisation. Some roles may be embedded with health and management teams or quality improvement teams.
You will have opportunities to learn and grow in your profession and to make positive changes.
What is it like to work in an NHS Knowledge and Library Service?
Alfred Gumbwa, Librarian Knowledge Specialist, Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
As a Librarian Knowledge Specialist, I support healthcare staff on how to access and utilise the library’s vast resources. This is accomplished through a variety of ways, including conducting literature searches, providing training and guidance on navigating medical databases, current awareness service bulletins and research support services among others. I am part of the library team spearheading knowledge mobilisation ensuring that relevant institutional knowledge is identified, captured, shared and integrated into practice supporting evidence-based practice and quality patient care for example, through conducting such activities as the randomised coffee trials, knowledge cafes, and so on.
My greatest satisfaction comes from witnessing the impact of a successful literature search on a client’s work, I find it highly rewarding.
As a new NHS starter, I quickly adapted to the demands of the role, overcoming the barriers to do with familiarising with medical terminology, navigating through complex medical databases and building new relationships with healthcare professionals. This rapid integration was facilitated by the exceptional support from the library team and on-the-job trainings.
Jack Welch, Library Assistant., Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
My role as a Library Assistant entails the front of house responsibilities in our team, this includes acting as the first point of contact for users who have enquires or an issue they may need help with. I also provide most of the responses in our mail inbox when it comes to document supply, accessing our resources and renewing books (amongst other tasks).
I enjoy introducing people to our services, which can sometimes surprise people at just how much there is available and helps them to access more resources and information they need. When it comes to barriers, it can be a challenge to navigate the different online tools we use and the different processes to understand, but after a while it becomes quite routine
Library Services Manager
Things have changed beyond recognition from when I first started in health libraries, and 2020 has brought yet more change, at a pace faster than anyone would have imagined. So what next for health librarians? I can’t predict what will come next, apart from the fact that things will change. They always do. But I do believe that if we stay true to our values, and keep helping to improve the care of the patients that our NHS organisations serve, there’s no other job that I’d rather be doing.
Knowledge and Library Services Manager, Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust
I took a pay cut to take my current role because it is more directly linked to where we make a difference to healthcare.
Finding the evidence to improve services and patient care either directly by providing evidence searches or indirectly by helping healthcare staff to find evidence for themselves. Making a real difference to the Trusts we work in and the patients they treat.
The regional and national networks we have available to us in health libraries for peer support, and the development and support opportunities provided to us by NHS England are second to none and are another highly valued element of my role which should not be underestimated.