We have a new venture we’re undertaking within Doncaster & Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals, aimed at engagement with staff who are at a very early stage of research interest, which we have identified as “research curious”. The Trust’s research department understandably have put a lot of effort into engaging with staff who are already research active. As a member of the Trust’s Clinical Academic Research Steering Group I could see there were stages before research active, since before research active you have to be research interested, and before interested comes research curious. Ideas started fizzing at that point, so I took a meeting action to consider it further and come up with a plan.…

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Recently, I attended an event titled ‘Expanding Research within Roles and Developing Partnerships’ hosted by our research team. The event highlighted the diverse research roles within the Trust, showcased current research projects, and featured a range of speakers from both within and outside the Trust.…

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In February 2023, PCFT launched a new Research Strategy . Part of the strategy is to develop associated Research Units. There are currently five, covering Older People, People with Learning Disabilities, Young People, People with Psychosis, and OPTIMED (Medicines Optimisation and Safety). The Knowledge Service assigned a particular Knowledge Specialist to three of the units (Older People, People with Learning Disabilities, Children & Adolescents). The named Knowledge Specialist was to act as a point of contact/access for Knowledge Services, who members could get to know by them attending meetings and contact directly.…

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This is a reflection on the process of getting from research idea to published paper. I should say from the start that this isn’t a journey taken by an experienced research professional. There were a few potholes on the way, and I hit them all. The motivation for this enterprise? Of course, a thirst for knowledge, but primarily the Quality Improvement Outcome Framework Outcome Five. If you don’t know this is the one that requires our services to be evidence based and encourages research. As this reflection is focused on process, not content, I will explain the research idea here and then move on. The idea was to record audio feedback on research results and post a link to the audio in an eMail. The aim to make our communication with end users, who almost always contacted us via eMail, more informative and engaging. The project was rather unimaginatively called the Audio Feedback Project. So, in the tradition of the blog genre, here are 10 things I learned.…

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In June 2021, a group of NHS library staff dared to stretch our comfort zones a little wider by attending two poetry workshops delivered by Betty Doyle. The workshops were part of a pilot research project being conducted by MMU, exploring whether there was such thing as ‘poetry anxiety’ amongst health library staff. In just 4 hours (and in some cases 2!), we were transformed into poetry explorers, appreciators and creators.…

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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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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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How do you follow on from a legend? With the retirement of David Stewart, it is my very great pleasure to work with knowledge and library services in the North West, North East and Yorkshire. Thank you to Northern Lights for the opportunity to introduce myself and my role.…

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