Thanks to everyone who helped out with this query about the future of
Patients Libraries - including Veronica Fraser, Adrian Clement CILIP for
LISA searches and Guy Daines CILIP, Isla Robert W Midlands South Strategic
Health Authority and other local health information providers and public
libraries, Margaret Evans/Doncaster and many others.
This has been a great start to making contact with local health libraries
and
information providers.
Coventry Libraries and Information Services currently staffs and supplies
books for a hospital library at Walsgrave Hospital. This also undertakes
ward rounds. It is mainly focussed on providing recreational reading. Some
volunteers are also used. There is also a service in the mental health unit.
Staff funding, space and resources is provided by the respective trusts (PCT
and Hospital trust)
See www.library.nhs.uk <http://www.library.nhs.uk/> for reports
See <http://www.kic.gstt.nhs.uk>
Several public library authorities reported that they do not provide or
contribute towards a patients library service.
Please see below for other emails received and summaries of telephone
conversations
1) Tameside General Hospital.
Shut as a Patients lending service June 02, due to falling issues
Stock is now deposit collections on wards
Jan 03 now provide information
providing one stop shops : Infopatient is the Patient Information Centre.
The service is available for both in-patients and out-patients. Infopatient
is a joint project between Tameside Council and Tameside General Hospital
and is backed up by the full range of resources of the Tameside Libraries
Information Service ( www.tameside.gov.uk/leisure/new/lh06.htm
<http://www.tameside.gov.uk/leisure/new/lh06.htm>) at the Central library
<http://library.tameside.gov.uk/> in Ashton.
2)Doncaster and Rotherham meeting to discuss Patients Libraries
No new standards/guidelines or specific group for Patients Libraries - time
for a new direction?
Bibliotherapy has been a big movement in Patients Libraries (Bob Gann was a
pioneer in the 1970s) and particularly in mental health units
Ward rounds more difficult as more patients are day visitors - still a need
for long stay patients. Still need for newspapers/magazines/audio
visual/spoken work/large print/reading aids
Move to volunteers but may affect service quality and coverage.
Medical Library not the best environment to provide patient information
Doncaster DRI has a large Patients Library from which it organises ward
rounds and the home library service. It is jointly funded with the local
public library authority which provides staffing and resources. There are
also specialist initiatives such as CHIC (Childrens Information Centre) run
close to the wards.
3)We have three hospitals in the Shropshire County LIbrary area. These are
the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) at Shrewsbury, the Robert Jones and
Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital at Gobowen and Shelton Hospital in
Shrewsbury. All used to have services provided via Red Cross and St
John's Ambulance Service for patients only. We used to support the services
by including the volunteers in our volunteer training and supporting their
purchase of books through the library acquisition dept and this helped them
to obtain the same library discount. We also supported them with specific
stock if a patient wanted less mainstream material e.g. trains or
carpentry. In recent years, the services have been taken over by St Johns,
the local co-ordinator was replaced by a regional coordinator and despite
many attempts contact between the library service and the co-ordinator has
not been established.
The previous co-ordinator became a volunteer for Shelton and used library
stock to supplement the stock she purchased for the hospital and to fulfill
specific needs. She kept in close liaison with the county library service
but has now moved from the are so a new liaison has to be established. I
believe that both Shelton and Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt hospitals
withdrew from St Johns and used the capitation for their own schemes and
purchases.
The library at RSH has changed a great deal since the average length of
stay is now much shorter and this has impacted on the service provided. I
understand that a trolley service is still provided. A small library open
to patients and visitors was available but I think that has stopped due to
pressure on space.
4) current thinking is that recreational libraries are most
effictive when provided for patients in mental health and child care
settings and nursing homes where patients stay for recovery and probably
hospices. the concept of the ward trolley still exists in some places but
on the whole stay in hospital is deliberately quite short. for childrens'
wards it is a valuable service as the library can become a learning resource
to support their continued learning. this can link into the schools service
there is a growing amount of expectation that patients and families become
partners in healthcare. this means that there is a growing movement to
support patients' knowledge of illness, especially those with long-term
problems where hospital is used for respite or acute incidents. this is why
veronica suggested the nhs direct online contact for you and why we
developed equip.
there is a great health support library in birmingham central library. this
is used by students, pupblic and often healthcare staff that find it easier
to call in when in birmingham than to visit their local hospital
professional/medical library.
ward round is very difficult these days - sometimes league of friends people
add second hand novels on the trolley but people move around and are out so
quickly, housebound is outside our remit and remains with social care
nhs libraries to support healthcare staff are embedded as one of the trust
infrastructures in the west midlands we have no professional library
services also looking after any patient trolley service although there are
examples in mental health
especially in other parts of the country. in one or two places in the west
midlands there are patient information services in the hospital with a link
to the professional library service (often just liaison rather than
formally)
the culture for the trolley round in hospital has gone as people do not
stay, so you are looking at adding
value where the population is in hospital or health care organisation for a
long period.
5) The patients' library at Whipps is run by volunteers (The Friends of
Whipps
Cross) and they rely on donations of money and books to build up the book
stock. It is run quite separately from the main library.
6) the patients library service is provided by the Public Libraries in
Sunderland. This has always been the case and is partly because the staff
who provided the hospital service to the medical staff were seconded from
the Public Library.
They do ward rounds and have book boxes for the return of items.
7) As far as I know the situation here is that the stock is provided by the
Public library (apart from things which were donated) but the staffing is
entirely volunteer. Presumably there is some very slight overseeing by
someone from the public library occasionally. The room is obviously trust
property and I know that when they were changed into that room so that the
post room could move into the former one which was bigger they had to wait
ages for anyone to do anything about the shelves
8)We are currently looking into the services that we provide to
patients, carers and the public. There is a patient's library which is
mostly fiction, is run by volunteers and is nothing to do with the medical
library. The patients library is housed in a broom cupboard and gets most of
its business from ward rounds. We do have some patient level medical books
in the library but these were bought with auxiliary nursing staff and
nursing students in mind and we're not sure how happy members of the public
would be to come into a medical library. We do get the occasional patient
but it is very rare.
I have also discovered that there isn't much literature on this topic. I
will be meeting with our PPG group soon to see what services they would like
us to offer.
9) The library at Grantham hospital is a joint patient/staff facility.
10) Can I suggest you also contact the WRVS - until we moved into our new
building they used to run a library trolley as well as a small shop.
This stopped when the new building opened - for all sorts of reasons
including no storage space. However their headquarters may be able to put
you in touch with someone there who could discuss the methods, problems etc
the WRVS has with library services in a variety of areas of the UK. I
believe they still run a home-bound library service in some areas
11) Here at Queen's medical Centre in Nottingham our Patient's Library is
run by the Nottingham City Library service who provides the stock and part
time staffing. The library uses many volunteers. I have passed your message
onto the librarian so that she can answer your enquiry in more detail. As
for Health Information, I run a Children's Health Information Centre which
is funded by the hospital and is used by families and staff, you can check
out our web site to see what we do. Adult health information is covered by
the Pals staff at QMC.
Health Information Librarians in Nottingham meet regularly and the City
Library service is represented by Vivien Evans I have given you her contact
details I am sure she would be willing to let you know of developments
within the City Library service
12) website re. St Guys and St Thomases <http://www.kic.gstt.nhs.uk>
13) Our Trust has been in liaison with Oxfordshire County library service
who
were very helpful and offered contacts with community reference librarian,
social exclusion librarian and the mobile library service. As far as I can
tell there has not been a service to patients for a long time, maybe there
was a volunteer service in the past. (I asked for info locally regarding
set ups and most people said that WRVS or Friends were running libraries
based on donations, but at Sta Andrews Northants they had a contract with
the public libraries to provide stock and employed a library assistant
themselves to be on hand for supervised visits).
Our PALS people are leading on the patient library issue, and the preferred
option is to have mobile library visits, and some deposit collections all
using public librar resources. We have also decided that in a mental health
set up that health info is via PALS and 'information kiosks'with access to
selected internet sites.
14) Links to patient information centres can be found on:
http://www.equip.nhs.uk/services/pals.html#Patient%20Information%20Centres
I did a secondment at the pat info centre at Bham Children's hospital last
year - managing the centre and also evaluating its usage etc. and would be
happy to talk to you about the health info side anyway,
15) We have a patients library which consists of small collections on each
of the
8 wards, plus a trolley service run every Tuesday afternoon by a member of
the
local public library staff. We have magazines and books donated to us
through
the league of Hospital friends (along with cash donations to buy specific
books eg. large print/Welsh language). Also members of the public often
donate
their unwanted books etc. to us.
This has all been set up fairly recently to take over from the previous
patients library service which had fallen apart.
16) Most of my experience with patients' libraries has been in the U.S., so
I
hope you don't mind my passing on a bit from another country. I am
considering organising a library-oriented forum on health information for
the public. I am interested in the perspectives of NHS Direct, PALS, and
the Expert Patients Programme and how they relate to library services.
I think the main issues for NHS libraries are funding and confidentiality.
We allow members of the public to use our library, but we do not promote
this. I would be concerned about an influx of people wanting to research
their health conditions and the potential impact on our resources and staff.
I am also aware that some medical staff view the library as a haven where
they can study in peace.
Having said this, I think it would be great to encourage patients and the
public to take a more active role in their health care by learning about
their conditions and options for treatment, etc. Partnering with public
libraries is an excellent way to handle this. It still requires funding
though. One model is to route queries from the public through the public
library. If the public librarian cannot answer the question, he or she can
ring the hospital library. It would be nice to have dedicated hospital
library staff to facilitate this, eg, marketing services to the public and
answering queries. Healthnet, based at the University of Connecticut Health
Center Library, http://library.uchc.edu/departm/hnet/, was a pioneer in this
approach.
Another web site you might want to visit is CAPHIS (Consumer And Patient
Health Information Section) of the U.S. Medical Library Association:
<http://caphis.mlanet.org/>
16)We run a service to patients from within a large mental health trust -
with secure services - so the pts are being held in secure
conditions long term - & we have a service level agreement with
Sefton LIbrary Services & are developing a relationship with other
authorities in the area on other projects. I feel this is definately
the best way to run our kind of service The services (2) we run from
2 different sites in the Trust which are open for some of each week
1.
hold all of these categories - representation as a 'normal' public
library - with a concentration on mental health info 2. some ward
delivery - limited - accessing pts who cannot access the service -
restricted by staff time 3. health information - as above mental
health info - we are developing a project working locally with public
libs on mental health info provision to the community - looking at
evaluation of the resources - feeding the reviews back to community
etc. We are not the main supplier of health info for pts ( but no-one
else is) 4.As above SLA for pts services but I work as part of a team
that runs services to both staff and patients - 3 staff service points
& 2 patient - its useful for me to have contact with the provision of
staff services - I get to see a lot of staff through pt provision 5.I
would suggest partnership working is best - my situation is rare as
I'm employed by the NHS but deal with Public Libs - but historically
(20yrs) this has happened & so is easier but PL's have a remit to
reach disadvantaged public etc so could be argued -
17) Poole Hospital NHS Trust as a contact because of the work of the Health
Information and Resource Centre (HIRC) here. I am working mostly now as
Primary Care Librarian, but still retain links with the HIRC, where I worked
for 5 years.
This is a separate building on the hospital site, built 6 years ago and is
an access point for patients and relatives for written/electronic
information about health conditions and health-related issues. Reference
books and information leaflets are available and much use is now made of
authoritative Internet sites. Journal searching (eg Medline, British
Nursing Index and several other databases) is carried out on a patient's
behalf if needed and photocopies of articles from clinical journals can be
obtained either from the East Dorset Trusts' Library Service, or via them
from local or national interloan systems.
Poole hospital Library covers clinical and nursing staff information needs.
The Poole Hospital Librarian and the Health Information Officer at the HIRC
collaborate to produce Bookmarks of authoritative Internet sites for health
conditions. Some sites are relevant to patients, others to health
professionals. Examples of these can be seen at
www.poolehos.org/library/library.htm
<http://www.poolehos.org/library/library.htm>
The local public library, Poole Central Library, has for almost 15 years,
housed Healthpoint, providing health information by means of reference
books, leaflets and authoritative Internet sites (Tel 01202 675377). It is
the "information" arm of the local NHS Direct service, providing info to
people who phone them. The HIRC and Healthpoint staff have a good working
relationship and have collaborated on county projects. Healthpoint could be
a useful contact for you.
All the above is of course related to item 3 of the questions you asked.
The patients' recreational reading library at PHT is operated by the WRVS
and St John's Ambulance, under the Director of Nursing's office. There is
no involvement otherwise.
I did a very basic search for you to see what articles on patients'
libraries were indexed in Medline. The results are below, and bear out what
you say about very little having been done on this subject.
18) We are funded by the Trust Charitable Foundation. This is for 3 years
in the first instance so will shortly be a pressure to seek renewal and/or
alternative funding.
1)recreational reading - magazines, fiction, non fiction
This was the remit of the previous library service both for staff as a
recreational facility and for patients via ward trolley rounds also. When I
was appointed last August for new service, the plug had been pulled on the
recreational facility for staff and I was unsure about continuing patient
trolley rounds - cost effectiveness of staff time etc. Tried to keep this
going with Volunteer dept during our closure and setting up. Didn't work so
we are just re-launching - books to wards but also as a PR exercise,
promoting our service and new initiatives of 'information prescriptions'
which we are currently piloting. Not planning to buy fiction (donations
only) but will invest in language, large print and other media. All patient
stuff kept in back room rolling stack.
Buying daily papers and selected journals.
the relation between the local public library
service and the local hospital trust
informal contact only. Had initial thoughts to explore the service for
patient ward rounds but not now at this stage. Would like to talk about
possibility of developing KIC surgeries in the local public libs. No longer
thinking to support staff recreational service - we're giving free internet
access and careers advice etc instead.
surveys so far suggest they love the service. Really liking the opportunity
a bit removed from the clinical setting. All the reported stuff refers to
'informed patients' etc so we've a lot of support for developing services.
We average 250 users a day and this splits pretty well 50:50 patients,
carers, visitors and staff.
Thankyou all again and please contact me if you should need any
clarification or further information,
Rachel Speake
Manager Information and Community Services
Coventry Central Library
Smithford Way
Coventry
CV1 1FY
024 7683 4897/2314
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