In common with services everywhere, the service we have been able to provide over the past year has been coloured by the Trust’s response to COVID-19 and the guidance around that. The physical service was provided from the Library & Evidence Research Centre at Leeds General Infirmary, with staff coming into LGI on a rota to maintain safe minimal staffing, and working from home the rest of the time. We managed to maintain five-day opening for much of the year, but dropped to three days for March and April 2021, and are now back up to four days a week. Alongside the physical service we promoted electronic access, continued to deliver our literature search and enquiry services, and moved training over to remote delivery.
The physical space at the LGI became a base for various staff across the site who needed a safe place to work, and this use has continued alongside people returning to use it for its original purpose.
Our service points at our other sites (St James’s Hospital and Wharfedale Hospital) have remained either closed or on restricted access to staff in those parts of the site because of how the Trust designated buildings and parts of buildings (hot/cold, green/amber/red - take your pick!)
During the year the service was successful in obtaining funding from the Leeds Hospitals Charity (our charitable body) to develop a two new collections to support very different aspects of Trust activity.
One collection was developed by Daniel Park working with our Chaplaincy Team, and is a small collection of books aimed at supporting spirituality and the spiritual wellbeing of staff and patients. This links to the work being done elsewhere in the Trust to support the physical and mental wellbeing of staff throughout the pandemic and beyond.
The second collection was developed by Beth Tapster as part of a wider project to support the work of the Trust’s BME Network. This collection of books asks challenging questions about racism and racial inequalities and discrimination in health and employment, and is part of a Trustwide workstream which includes reciprocal mentoring and an Allyship programme. There is more information about this collection in an interview at New BME-specific books and resources available for Leeds Teaching Hospitals staff - YouTube
The Trust has not permitted face-to-face training for anything other than clinical or physical skills which cannot be taught online this year. As a result, most of the normal training programme was cancelled, and offered only as one-to-one sessions over Teams. However, some group sessions which are run specifically for other departments were converted and run as remote modules.
The First Steps programme is an introductory programme for staff wishing to develop research skills and explore the idea of “research”. This was developed in discussion with the R&I Team is is run under the umbrella of the Research Academy. It had only run once in pilot before covid struck, so during the year the content was revisited and reworked for online delivery. Two more cohorts have now finished the programme, with a fourth underway, and although not quite the same as face to face, it does seem to be working well, with the team growing in confidence with each successive cohort.
The same may be said about sessions which are delivered on two certificate courses in the Trust - the Certificate in Adult Critical Care Nursing run by the Trust as a delivery partner for Manchester Metropolitan University, and a Certificate in Anaesthetic Nursing run with Huddersfield University. Both courses had stopped during the height of the pandemic but started again this year, and the sessions for both were again run successfully online.
Publications
Adam M. Galloway, et al
A systematic review of the non-surgical treatment of Perthes’ disease
Bone & Joint Open 2020 1:12, 720-730
https://doi.org/10.1302/2633-1462.112.BJO-2020-0138.R1
Alunno A, Najm A, Mariette X, et al
Immunomodulatory therapies for SARS-CoV-2 infection: a systematic literature review to inform EULAR points to consider
Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases 2021;80:803-815
https://ard.bmj.com/content/80/6/803
Najm A, Alunno A, Mariette X, et al
Pathophysiology of acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection: a systematic literature review to inform EULAR points to consider
RMD Open 2021;7:e001549. doi: 10.1136/rmdopen-2020-001549
https://rmdopen.bmj.com/content/7/1/e001549
Paul Twiddy
Library & Information Service Manager
