Resources

For help searching the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub, registering for NHS OpenAthens, accessing and using any of these resources contact Beth Thompson, Primary Care Knowledge Specialist at beth.thompson16@nhs.net

Access to Resources

For the organisation, select Primary Care and ICB Staff in Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes. If you type in Bedfordshire or Milton Keynes, it will appear as an option to select.

Download the LibKey Nomad browser extension for easy one click access to available articles when viewing on websites like Pubmed, Google Scholar and publisher websites.

Knowledge and Library Hub

Access the Knowledge and Library Hub

The Knowledge and Library Hub brings together key resources in one place including BMJ Best Practice, ebooks, journals, and databases such as MedLine and CINAHL.  You can access the Hub without logging in, but you will need an NHS OpenAthens account to access any of the resources.

BMJ Best Practice

BMJ Best Practice summarises the evidence to support decision-making at the point of care. 

Step by step guides to diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, plus procedure videos connect you to the latest evidence and best practice when you need it.

Download the BMJ Best Practice app to access all this content offline and on the go. Log in with your OpenAthens account and register for a BMJ Best Practice personal account to use the app. 

Royal Marsden Manual of Clinical and Cancer Nursing Procedures

Access the Royal Marsden Manual of Clinical and Cancer Nursing Procedures

350 evidence-based clinical nursing procedures related to every aspect of care, from handwashing to CPR. including all required equipment, images and videos.

Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines

Access the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines

The essential handbook for the safe and effective prescribing of psychotropic agents

Databases

Search databases in-depth information such as systematic reviews, clinical trials and other research papers.

Contact Knowledge Specialist Beth Thompson beth.thompson16@nhs.net if you would like advice on searching. Alternatively, access the How to Search the Literature Effectively elearning.

- Medline: the main database for biomedical research
- CINAHL: nursing and allied health research
- EMBASE: includes all Medline content plus drug and pharmacy content
- Cochrane Library the leading source of systematic reviews, Clinical Answers and other resources

Find more on the Knowledge and Library Hub, including Trip, EMCARE, British Nursing Index, PsychInfo.

Online Journals

View the Browzine Library for browsing journals, including British Journal of General Practice, the Lancet and the BMJ.

Oxford Handbooks and Textbooks

Around 160 titles on the Oxford Academic Medicine platform, covering all aspects of medicine and healthcare.

How to access:

Search on the Knowledge and Library Hub or go direct to Oxford Academic to view the collection.
Click the links below to go to specific titles.
Log in with your NHS OpenAthens account. If you don’t have one yet, see the top of the page to register.

Key titles

Kortext ebooks

Over 250 ebooks including medicine and healthcare textbooks, plus titles on leadership, management, sustainability, diversity and wellbeing.

How to access:

Search on the Knowledge and Library Hub or go direct to Kortext to view the collection.
Log in with your NHS OpenAthens account. If you don’t have one yet, see the top of the page to register.

How to download for offline reading:

To read online:

1. Go to Kortext ebooks
2. Sign in with your NHS OpenAthens account. Don’t have on yet? Register at openathens.nice.org.uk
3. Browse or search for your interests
4. Click on the titles you want to read to read online.

To download:

1. Follow the steps above, then download the app via kortext.com/kortext-apps/
2. Open the app and sign in with your NHS OpenAthens account
3. You should see the books you have selected on the website in the My Library section of the app. If not, click on the 3 dots in the top right and click ‘Refresh’
4. Click on a book to open it
5. Click the T to change colour and text size

Evidence-Based Open Access Resources

NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries

NICE Clinical Knowledge Summaries provides summaries of the current evidence base on various conditions and treatments for primary care practitioners

British National Formulary

Access the BNF and the BNF for Children for rapid reference to up-to-date information on the use of medicines.

eWin: Workforce Information Network: Evidence Briefs

eWIN Evidence Briefs, created by the Knowledge Management team at NHS England, present collections of recent evidence on workforce and education in the NHS, including briefs on specific professional roles, plus themes such as AI, Autism, Estates and Facilities, Sustainability, Workforce Transformation and more.

Evidence-Based Interventions

Evidence-based Interventions, developed by doctors and patients and hosted by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, offers guidance on medical and surgical interventions, tests and treatments Aiming to complement NICE guidelines, it is designed to prevent interventions where the evidence indicates they are inappropriate for some patients in some circumstances.

GP Evidence

GP Evidence was developed at the University of Oxford by GPs for GPs. It has clear visual representations of the benefits and harms of treatments to support clinicians to discuss this with patients, and aid shared-decision-making and personalised care. Watch the Introduction to GP Evidence video.

Health Equity Evidence Centre

The Health Equity Evidence Centre is an evidence hub on health inequity in primary care, developed by a collaborative group of UK academics and clinicians. It includes evidence briefs and living evidence maps, signposting to key evidence on a range of topics relevant to health inequities in primary care.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar can be useful when searching for non-healthcare topics. Be aware that although it searches more ‘academic’ sources than the internet generally, not all sources will be reliable, high quality research. It is best to assess each article on a case-by-case basis. Follow the steps below to link it with your Athens account so it is clear which articles you can access.

Go to Google Scholar
Click the menu button in the top left corner
Click ‘Settings’
Click ‘Library links’
Type in Primary Care and ICB staff in Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes into the search box
When this appears below the search box, make sure the box next to it is ticked
Click ‘Save’
Now when you search for articles you will see a Full Text link next to articles that are available via Athens. Other articles may be available open access.

Wellbeing Knowledge and Library Resources

This document brings together ebooks on organisational wellbeing and personal wellbeing and resilience, plus a collection of uplifting resources collated by NHS staff for NHS staff. View the Wellbeing Knowledge and Library Resources.

AI Research Tools

These tools are listed here for information and this should not be seen as recommendations. They can be useful additions to your research resources but should not be relied on as your only source of information.

NB:. All inputs into AI tools may be available to the companies that run them. Do no input any personally identifiable, sensitive or confidential information.

Be aware that although they have many merits, the summaries provided by all these tools can be inaccurate. It is always best to check and verify the source of the information.

The search functionality within these tools lacks transparency, so it is not clear exactly how they work, and searches cannot be reproduced.

Considerations when using AI tools for research are

Is the AI tool transparent about how its search works, so you can tell if it is right for your needs?
Does the AI tool enable you to find the source of the information so that you can check that information provided is correct?
Is the AI tool transparent about it’s limitations e.g. does it highlight where information could be inaccurate, or provide information on it’s limitations on it’s help pages. Watch out for anything that claims to have a very reliable, as this might not be true.

Medwise.ai is designed to offer clinicians quick access to essential information such as guidelines at the point of care. You can ask questions in natural language and it aims to find the answers within relevant UK guidelines. You can log in with your nhs.net details.

Consensus uses AI to find and synthesise the evidence in research papers and identify key information from individual papers. It’s unique feature is the Consensus Meter that shows what proportion of papers agree or disagree with a research question.

Elicit is similar in many ways to Consensus. It also finds and summarises research papers according to your question. However, it presents the information extracted from the papers in a table for easy comparison.

Undermind is designed to be “an intelligent research assistant”. It allows for more complex, nuanced research queries to help find the most relevant results. It provides a brief research report and a table of results.

Research Rabbit is a citation-based research mapping tool. Add a paper to find how it links with other papers on the same topic.

ChatGPT and Google Gemini are the most well-known generative AI tools. They generate responses based on patterns identified in the data that has been fed into them. They can be very unreliable as a source of information, but can be useful for some tasks such as exploring ideas, identifying keywords and synonyms for searches, converting text into tables, paraphrasing information etc.