Dear All,

A little while ago I asked: 

"We run a programme of information skills training for NHS staff - doctors, nurses and allied health professionals.  We run regular sessions on literature searching, Internet  searching and critical appraisal and people can book in advance.

But we find that the number of people who book is very small, sometimes zero, and that often people who have booked a session do not come. 

We are going to start emailing reminders to people who have booked.  We will also look at how we publicise the sessions and whether we are offering the right things.

But meantime we are interested to know if this is anyone else's experience.   If you have found a way to increase take up of information skills courses offered to NHS staff, we would be interested to know."

30 people replied - thank you! - lots of them were finding the same as us.   Here are some of the comments/suggestions, which I have paraphrased: 

·	Providing lunch helped (I got these sponsored from drug reps).

·	Providing one to one sessions then booking people onto a training course and sent out reminders a week before helped.  (Several people offered one to one sessions instead of group sessions, and people pointed out that people only wanted training when they had a need for it, which is not necessarily when you offer it).

·	Tying up the course times with shifts or shift breaks so that people are not stuck in clinics when they have booked a course - however - if you put the course at the end of a shift, then the chances are that people will be to tired to learn effectively.

·	Reminding people why the course would be beneficial - e.g., find that paper for that essay/research project.  

·	Attendees are enthusiastic about the course, so it may be an idea to use statements from previous attendees to highlight the benefits of acquiring these skills.

·	Does advertising the course too far in advance reduce the likelihood of people attending?  

·	Our full day course is well attended, but response is mixed to shorter courses.

·	Judging from the experience of local acute hospitals, it's possible that the timetabled courses idea suits community staff better than acute hospital staff.

·	Draw people's attention to: "But when a search retrieves nothing worth while, was it because there is none, or is it that the person looking just did not find it?"  (Sanders S, Del Mar C. Clever searching for evidence. BMJ 2005;330(7501):1162-1163.)

·	Link into the department study days.

·	Take the library to them rather than have them come to you.  

·	The problems can be summarised as follows: People use Google for everything and don't realise there are better alternatives; - People don't know anything about NeLH or the databases available, so they don't know what they are missing, or they know something, but don't have time to learn more.  

·	The main incentive for people to train is if they are studying and have to do research for projects.

·	I have found posters, leaflets and internet/intranet announcements to be of limited value in generating interest.  

·	Get included in the training programme offered by your training department - and use their advertising.

·	If there are courses being run by your Nursing & Midwifery Practice Development Centre suggest that your courses (or a version of them) should be part of those courses.

·	Get people to use booking forms which have to be countersigned by line managers agreeing to free the time to attend (not always possible for ward staff of course, because of last minute staff shortages).

·	Issue certificates of attendance for inclusion in PDP folders.

·	I tried using the hospital intranet to publicise sessions...  found that a lot of staff don't bother reading their emails & so our email alerts were just not getting through. 

·	Use the hospital staff newsletter to publicise training sessions.

·	Telling users who were having difficulty searching about the library's training sessions. 

·	Having regular library inductions for users. We issue information packs to users and also tell them about our training sessions. 

·	Staff don't have time to attend courses, and can't get time off.  

·	Maybe it would be useful for you to email their managers to confirm the booking - so that it puts the responsibility on them to organise their staff time better.  

·	I find that any session is more successful if it is tailored to a particular staff group e.g. OTs, Orthopods, respiratory nurses etc and particularly if it is part of any education programme
·	already running e.g. with Specialty tutors.

·	Reasons for non-booking and non-attendance are, I think, various but include:

·	can't be released from work at last minute; meetings often called at short notice in NHS; our courses not statutory/mandatory so other courses take priority (and these may come up after booking our session); people too tired/overloaded to take on more than is absolutely necessary; people don't see relevance to them unless undertaking formal study; people frightened of group training - of looking foolish or stupid; courses not linked to matters of the moment; session too long and covers too much; courses not fun (?)  how does one make critical appraisal FUN?

·	You could try: having sessions at different hours of the day and evening; providing refreshments; linking sessions to particular areas of interest at your hospital - can the research group help?; having a good hook on which to hang session - something current - breast cancer in women under 40; linking in to another group - e.g. do you have a cost saving group? - you could demo how to save money; running joint sessions with a group more used to training - Training and Development?; e-learning instead of face to face; buying into the induction programmes; using lecturers to coerce;  sending out appointments with tear-off slips for the booker to send back if they can't make the session; ; sending out a routine form to people who don't attend, asking them for feedback to inform future practice

·	The main reasons for failure to turn up are: 1. Forgetting; 2. Getting caught in clinic or theatre; 3. Having to cover for other staff

·	The main reasons for failure to book are: 1. Wrong day/time; 2. Need to ask manager; 3. Forget to ask manager; 4. Unable to spare full length of session time; 5. Unable to see benefits/don't know they need it

·	Levy a charge for non attendance and only allocate places to individuals who have obtained a countersignature on their booking form from their departmental manager.  

·	State quite clearly on the booking form that anyone who cannot attend must contact us at least one week prior to the course, except in the event of an emergency occurring on or just before the day of the course.  All attendees are contacted by email ten days beforehand to ensure that they are still able to make it.

·	I have however, teamed some of my sessions with R AND D and we have done an EBP session.   We have then taken to taking sessions onto the wards where we use the lounge and a laptop and flip chart.  Staff can then book/drop in on the day.  

·	Interestingly enough our IT trainer who trains on Electronic Patient Record keeping which is mandatory also finds a poor turnout due to the staffing/sickness levels on the wards.

·	It was my own experience that tailoring training by subject with particular user groups in mind worked well as an entree - e.g. Information sources on the net - About Women's health, About Child Health, ...  was a good way to bring people in for training evidently related to their daily workload -introducing them to NLH and to key web sources in their subject area and basic searching skills - and from this base it was then easier to attract commitment to more generic training on searching skills, finding the evidence, databases etc

·	We give one-to-one tuition as and when requested.  These sessions are usually short and sweet (10-15 minutes) teaching one specific thing at a time (e.g. this is how you get into Medline and search with a keyword or phrase).   Occasionally we need to do a longer session for a specific person (maybe someone with an urgent need for an in-depth search they want to do themselves, or someone who is IT-phobic).  Our customers seem to prefer this method of learning and we find that we rarely have to teach people the same thing twice.

·	Use the Athens renewals as another opportunity.  We've also found here that a two hour course is too long for most people, so are thinking of breaking up the intro course into more bite-size chunks - a session on Proquest, say; or a (basic) session on Dialog.  And then there's Google - we all use it, so we can't spit at clinical staff for doing likewise.  Better to show them its full potential. Have concluded that a 40 minute demo takes less concentration!

·	I'm also increasingly of the belief that we are not training them to be information scientists - or we shouldn't be.  Hence, if someone is busy & wants me to do the search for them, I'm happy to do this.


Thanks again to all who took time to reply, and I hope this helps those who said they would be interested in the replies!

Best wishes,





Keith

Keith Nockels MA MCLIP
Information Librarian
Clinical Sciences Library
University of Leicester
Leicester Royal Infirmary, PO Box 65
Leicester LE2 7LX
England (UK)

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