Information Skills for Health

 Feel more confident when critically appraising articles or discussing research with your colleagues. Watch the videos from NEJM Evidence Stats Stat! series . These short, animated, easy to follow videos show you various methods used in research studies, explaining key aspects and influence on results. Learn more on propensity scores, linear regression, cluster RCTs and much more. Over 20 videos are available.   screen-shot of a selection of videos on the Stats Stat! website

Critical Appraisal is a key skill but why is it so complicated?  This 45-minute course run by UHNM and Keele Librarians will help build your confidence in appraising a RCT. By going through key strategies researchers use to mitigate bias will help you understand common themes that feature in quantitative studies. Such as selection bias, dealing with confounders, attrition, publication bias and data dredging. This session will touch on basic statistics, the use of P values, CI and consider MID/MICD in the paper. Further support materials and signposting will also be provided. Certificates are provided upon completion if requested. Wednesday 28th January 12:30pm Book online

NEJM Evidence This is a monthly journal publishing case studies, original research, clinical trials and reviews but it goes beyond the clinical trial, beyond the research paper. It includes exploration and analysis of the process of clinical trials and encourages critical analysis of research articles.  Develop your skills to become more critical of the research you read and become a better evidence-based practitioner. Unique content and features includes: Tomorrow’s Trial – short articles highlighting accepted practices that lacks solid evidence and invites clinician readers to propose clinical trials to fill those gaps Patient Platform - patients who have been in a clinical trial, part of a research study, or had their care impacted strongly by these, share their thoughts on their experience Stats, STAT! - animated videos explaining a fundamental statistical concept View this journal now ; log in with your NHS OpenAthens username / password. If you like that, you might ...

 Are you completing a literature search and want to make sure the articles you use are good quality? Then make sure you check what tools will help you to critically appraise the articles you find. Complete our updated tutorial Critical Appraisal Tools For more help with literature searching: Take a look at  more etutorials Book a training session Contact the Health Library

 When you identify articles during your literature search you need to be able to critically appraise the articles to ensure that they present: valid research valid results relevance to your question You can complete our tutorial Critical Appraisal Tools to learn more about tools available to help you to develop your critical appraisal skills.

 The last year has highlighted the inequalities existing in our healthcare systems. How do you ensure that factors affecting equality are considered in research? Take a look at this article from the Students 4 Best Evidence blog: Consideration and guidance for equitable clinical trials

The Health Library runs 2 critical appraisal training sessions as part of its scheduled programme. One session looks at a qualitative research paper and the other at a randomised controlled trial research paper. One of the training librarians will take you through the critical appraisal of the paper. There will be opportunity to discuss the papers selected and ask questions. Features of the critical appraisal course You can book online or contact the training librarians to reserve your place.

The evidence hierarchy lists various study types according to the quality of evidence that they produce. Study types expected to deliver good quality, reliable, applicable research are at the top of the pyramid. Different study types can be used to research different types of problems. Study types have key characteristics that define them. These characteristics may affect the quality of the study such as whether the study is prone to bias or how accurate the results will be. These are things to consider when you are deciding to include a paper as part of your evidence. Image showing the Evidence Hierarchy pyramid - with case reports at the bottom and systematic reviews at the top; the quality of evidence increases up the pyramid As we have seen with our other evaluation tools, it is not about deciding whether a paper is good or poor but whether it is good, reliable and appropriate to answer your question. Learn more about the Evidence Hierarchy and study types by comple...

When you are looking at research articles you need to appraise them critically for validity, results and relevance. This means looking at the paper in a systematic way to determine whether it is going to help you to answer your question. There are a wide range of tools that can help you to develop your skills in doing this. Our etutorial Critical Appraisal Tools will introduce you to some tools that can help. The tools do not necessarily give you a definitive “yes” or “no” but they help you to ask the right questions to assess the paper. Tools icon - use critical appraisal tools to help you to assess research papers In a similar way that we use the CRAAP tool (see previous blog post) if an item fails your appraisal it does not necessarily mean that it is a rubbish paper, just that it will not help you to answer your question.

Extra dates have been added to the Critical Appraisal Training schedule to help nursing students prepare for their critical appraisal assignment. You'll get an opportunity to practise appraising an article. There are 2 courses you can choose from: Critical Appraisal of a Qualitative Research Paper Critical Appraisal of a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT) Paper You can book your place via our online form or by contacting the training librarians . Book now to avoid disappointment.

What is it? The Evidence Hierarchy is a pyramid that aims to represent the relative quality of evidence, the hierarchy, that can be determined from various study types. It is suggested that not all evidence is the same, with different study types being subject to strengths, weaknesses, flaws and biases. The study types listed at the top of the pyramid are considered to provide better quality evidence than those at the bottom. There are a variety of different definitions of what is included in the pyramid and there is even some contention as to how useful it is. You can find a helpful definition from the blog Students4BestEvidence . Key Features One of the key things to remember is that the pyramid is only giving you a representation of the quality of the study design , not whether the article you are looking at is “good” or “poor”. You will still need to critically appraise the research paper – for example you may be looking at a randomised controlled trial, but if i...

What is it? CASP is the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme. This is a skills programme devised by a training and consultancy firm to help users to learn about and understand the critical appraisal of healthcare–related studies. Part of the programme provides checklists to help users to systematically critically appraise studies. These checklists are available online. Key Features Checklists are available for a range of study types: Systematic Reviews Qualitative Studies Randomised Controlled Trials Case Control Studies Cohort Studies You can either print off the checklist or fill it in online and then download and save it. How can it help you? The CASP checklists prompt you to think about various aspects of a study in order to help you to decide whether the study is valid, the results make sense and it is relevant to your question. How to access it? The checklists are freely available online. eTutorial Our etutorial Critical Appraisal Tools...

You can now complete the CASP (Critical Appraisal Skills Programme) checklist online, then download and save it. Use the CASP checklists to help you to critically appraise different published research studies. You can now complete the form online, then download and save to your computer. Great for keeping a record of your critical appraisals and to add to your CPD or skills portfolio. screen-shot of an edited CASP checklist

What is it? NHS Choices Behind the Headlines is part of the NHS Choices website . The Behind the Headlines section investigates and analyses reported news headlines on health-related topics – separating fact from fiction or exaggeration at least. Key Features You’ll find analysis of recently reported health topics. The website investigates how the news has been reported; it identifies the research paper that the news is based on and critically appraises the paper to determine whether the reported headlines are justified. Items are presented in chronological order, although you can select to view items by category. How can it help you? The articles created here can show really useful examples of how to critically appraise a paper. They also give you pointers as to the types of questions you should be asking when looking at how research has been conducted. How to access it? NHS Choices Behind the Headlines is freely available on the Internet. You can also find t...

Learn more about critical appraisal and what tools you can use to help you to critically appraise a research paper - complete our etutorial on Critical Appraisal Tools . Image showing info about the critical appraisal tools etutorial

Get ready for your assignment by practicing your critical appraisal skills. You can sign-up to one of our training courses for beginners and have a go critically appraising a paper. There are 2 courses: Critical Appraisal of a Qualitative Study Critical Appraisal of a Randomised Controlled Trial Each course is led by a librarian from our training team. Dates are now available for April through to June. You can book online or get in touch with our training team to book.

When you have retrieved a number of articles from your literature search, how do you assess the quality of the evidence described? The Health Library now runs 2 introductory and complementary training sessions on the skills that you will need to undertake the Critical Appraisal of healthcare research articles: Critical Appraisal of Qualitative Research Critical Appraisal of a Randomised Controlled Trial These sessions take the form of practical workshops, reading an article and assessing it using the CASP tool for Critical Appraisal. Book on a course via our online booking form or contact a member of our training team .