The Library and Knowledge Service at East Cheshire NHS Trust has always offered sessions in topics such as evidence search, critical appraisal etc. The majority of these sessions delivered were 1:1 in the library and on an ad hoc request basis.

The Library team wanted to align these sessions with our stakeholders and make them more relevant to their daily practice so we looked at developing some sessions on Evidence Based Medicine/Practice which we then delivered to teams within the Trust as part of their CPD sessions. The sessions were bespoke (but using a central core slides) based on requirements and time.

Dietetics wanted to start a series of CPD sessions and asked the library what we had to offer, we saw this as an opportunity to combine our existing offering into a series of ‘taught’ sessions on Evidence Based Medicine. Terminology like EBM/EBP and the prospect of journal club made the sessions more appealing and immediate to colleagues and they were able to see where good literature searching skills fit into their roles.

Paediatrics were interested in starting a journal club and felt that an introduction to the cycle of EBM, critical appraisal, statistical tools and literature searching would be useful. These were delivered in three 30 minute lunchtime sessions in the hospital, sessions were face to face but we also delivered over Teams and recorded the sessions for those who were off shift or couldn’t leave the ward. We were concerned about the level of delivery as participants ranged from F1 to Consultant, but it turned out that literature search and critical appraisal can never be explained too simply!

We are now confident in delivering an EBM package that we can offer to all teams at East Cheshire NHS Trust.

If you’d like a look at the slides please contact: Holly.Cook3@nhs.net

Holly Cook
East Cheshire NHS Trust