I work as a Library Assistant in the Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust, one of the biggest acute NHS trusts in the country. In June I volunteered to participate in a series of poetry workshops. Staff from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) were conducting an action research project on poetry in health libraries, and they needed a diverse group of Northern NHS Library staff to explore an intriguing question: ‘Can poetry add to the existing NHS Health Library offer?’.…

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The opportunity to take part in a research project about poetry and wellbeing, by participating in online workshops, appealed to me because I have not previously associated poetry with health libraries and I was interested in discussing the potential benefits. I hadn’t anticipated writing much of my own poetry during the workshops, but that revealed itself to be the focus.…

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Like (I suspect) many people, the word poetry fills me with anxiety and takes me back to excruciating English lessons at school when people would be asked to read lines of poetry aloud to an unreceptive and giggling bunch of teenagers. I enjoy reading novels but I rarely read poetry for pleasure and I feel that my school experiences did put me off.…

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My name is Amy Ward and I’ve just joined the team at East Lancashire Hospitals Trust. I will mainly be supporting our Clinical Librarian with literature searching and outreach activities. I completed my library traineeship at the University of Bradford in 2014/15. This is where I got my first taste of health librarianship, shadowing the health studies librarian Donna delivering PICO research sessions to the students. I graduated from my MA in Librarianship in 2018 and I have previously worked in further and higher education libraries.…

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This short piece is about our service and work we have done together since the last update in September 2020. We welcomed back Laura Jeffreys, Knowledge Specialist: Quality, returning from maternity leave part-time in August which has given us all a lift and increased our capacity as a team. The Transformation process at PCFT, and the ongoing effects of COVID-19 continue to affect our ability to build stable relationships and implement systems. We are still all working predominantly from home, with some limited attendance in the office to maintain systems & for health and wellbeing. Some face to face inductions and training are cautiously restarting, which is both exciting and challenging. A 5 year plan has now been accepted by the Board, and we welcome Simon Sandhu to the post of Deputy Medical Director.…

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We launched Schwartz Rounds in June 2021 to provide a group reflective practice forum enabling staff from all disciplines to reflect on the emotional aspects of their work. They provide crucial support for staff by creating a safe space for people to share and reflect on their experiences.…

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Since May 2021, those interested in poetry have been sharing their thoughts via an LKS North Poetry Group.…

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In June 2017 a library colleague and I were discussing the celebrity recipients of the Queen’s Birthday Honours. We began to toy with the idea of nominating one of the clinicians who uses our service for an award. The clinician was well regarded in her field, an active researcher with numerous published works and a long career in the NHS. Definitely the sort of candidate you’d expect to be honoured. We presumed it would be an easy process, fill out a couple of forms and then wait for the invitation from the palace………

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I feel a little like a GSCE Geography case study at the moment as I’m migrating from the south west to the north west, but I am happy with that.…

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For several years, the Leeds Community Healthcare (LCH) NHS Trust Library team has subscribed to BrowZine (from ThirdIron) for LCH users. In 2020 we extended the subscription to include NHS Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) staff, including all primary care colleagues in Leeds, giving a much more consistent service to our users.…

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