Skills workshops

Library and Evidence Services provide support to all NHS staff at associated trusts, including those in admin and clerical roles as well as clinical roles, and at every stage of your career. Whether you’re new to the Library, or simply want a refresher, this induction session provides a quick overview of everything we offer: on-site and online resources, as well as services provided by your dedicated team of NHS Support Librarians and library staff. We recommend attendance for all new staff, as this is your opportunity to meet with one of your librarians, ask any questions, and find out how we can help you.

This session will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email. 

This session will allow you to meet the following professional standards. 

The best evidence at the point of care, together with your clinical expertise and patient values, supports evidence based practice and better patient care. This workshop will focus on clinical decision support tools designed to be used at the point of care, including BMJ Best Practice, as well as appraised and summarised evidence resources. It will look at how to access these resources, examine key features, and how to use them to support patient care. Please note this workshop does not cover searching skills for original research papers - please book on our ‘Getting the best results’ workshop to learn how to do this.

This session will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email. 

This session will allow you to meet the following professional standards. 

Finding the strongest evidence requires searching beyond Google and PubMed. Using medical databases such as Medline and Embase can help you find robust primary research. This session outlines the principles of database searching and introduces some advanced techniques, focusing specifically on the Ovid platform.  

This session will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email. 

This session will allow you to meet the following professional standards. 

The NHS Knowledge and Library Hub is your gateway to a range of online resources including databases, ejournals, eBooks, and open access collections. This bite-sized session will introduce you to the Hub's key features and functions, helping you find and access full-text research papers to support your work, research, and studies. 

This session will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email.  

This session will allow you to meet the following professional standards. 

Critical appraisal and evidence-based medicine can seem daunting, but with practice and confidence anyone can pick up the necessary skills to improve their engagement with, and understanding of, the literature. Working on these skills allows us to better approach clinical evidence and research, reading journal articles with a critical eye and an idea of if and how we might transform evidence into practice.

These sessions don’t require prior experience of critical appraisal but would be a good refresher for anyone who wants more practice. In addition to the introductory session, there are further sessions that focus on conducting the critical appraisal process with an actual article – one will focus on quantitative research, with the other focusing on qualitative research. Both sessions will examine how the process is undertaken, and why it is important. 

These sessions will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email.  

These sessions will allow you to meet the following professional standards. 

How to read a research article: critical appraisal of a randomised controlled trial 

This session will focus on critically appraising quantitative research, using a randomised controlled trial paper as the example. It offers hands-on experience in critically appraising a quantitative paper through a group discussion activity.  

How to read a research article: critical appraisal of a qualitative article

This session will focus on critically appraising qualitative research, including methodologies such as grounded theory. It offers hands-on experience in critically appraising a qualitative paper through a group discussion activity.  

A good academic poster at a conference enables you to both network and clearly communicate the work that you've been doing. This bite-sized session will help you in designing and producing a great conference poster to make you and your work a talking point.

This session will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email.  

This session will allow you to meet the following professional standards. 

This introductory session is aimed at NHS staff undertaking an evidence review, such as for research, study, or for a work-based project. The workshop will focus on planning an evidence review, constructing the methodology section of the review, and some options for presenting your results. It will show a step-by-step pathway for undertaking a literature review, some top tips for keeping on track with your review, and resources to support your skills in this area.

N.B. If you are undertaking a more comprehensive review, such as a scoping or systematic review, please book instead on our other skills workshop,  Introduction to undertaking scoping and systematic reviews.

If you do not feel confident with database searching, or critically appraising papers, please complete our database searching and critical appraisal workshops before attending this session.

This session will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email.  

This session will allow you to meet the following professional standards. 

This session provides an overview of the scoping review or systematic review process. It will introduce you to review processes, tools and resources to select and organise your papers, look at approaches to writing a methodology, suggest ways to present your findings, and signpost you to resources to further develop your skills in this area.

If you do not feel confident with database searching or critically appraising papers, please complete our database searching and critical appraisal workshops before attending this session.

This session will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email.  

This session will allow you to meet the following professional standards. 

Whether you’re writing academic assignments, doing research or keeping up with the evidence, managing your references well can save you time. Reference management software allows you to organise your reading materials and cite what you’ve read easily and accurately. In this session we cover the reasons you may wish to use a reference manager, provide some examples, and demonstrate the main functions of a reference manager using Zotero, a freely available software application.  

This session will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email.  

This session will allow you to meet the following professional standards. 

This session will introduce you to the basics of preparing your work for publication. It aims to provide a set of tools and principles with which to approach publishing your work, as well as aiming to increase your awareness of the areas of academic writing you need to focus on and improve.

This session will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email.  

This session will allow you to meet the following professional standards.

Ensuring that individuals and communities can access, understand, appraise, and use information and services to make decisions about health is key to health literacy. Improving people’s health literacy will enhance their ability to self-manage their health. This session will introduce the concept of health literacy, show examples of both good and bad patient information resources, and demonstrate ways to help improve how information is provided to patients to allow them better control over their own health care. 

This session will be delivered online via Microsoft Teams. Once you have booked through KnowledgeShare you will be sent a link to the Teams meeting by email. 

This session will allow you to meet the following professional standards.