Nursing Times freebies this weekend!

As part of it's one-year anniversary celebrations, Nursing Times Learning is making all of it's online content free this weekend, 24-27 June. You can access all of the Learning Units and if you complete and pass one unit you will be entered into a prize draw to win a £25 Marks & Spencer Voucher! Good Luck!

Navigating the NHS reforms

If you're confused by all the news about the recent amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill, take a look at this guide by the Nursing Times, who have outlined what the impact of the reforms will be for nurses.

Learning Disabilities Week

This week is Learning Disabilities week so I thought I would flag up a few resources you might find useful. Mencap has a lot of resources on their website, as does the Scottish Consortium for Learning Disability which has some great free podcasts.

You can also access government reports on the Department of Health website, such as Valuing People Now, which focuses on improving quality of life for people with learning disabilities.

Doing a literature review

Lots of you seem to be working on literature reviews at the moment so I thought I'd share some hints and tips. Firstly, if you are not sure what a literature review is, or how to go about doing one, have a look at some of the books in the library. This one by Helen Aveyard is very good and we have a previous edition as an ebook here. If you are doing a literature review you need to search comprehensively - don't forget to search the databases here. You can use search engines like Google (or preferably, Google Scholar) but databases offer much more sophisticated ways of searching so you are more likely to find what you need with the minimum hassle. CINAHL, for example, has a handy tick box to limit your results to primary research articles.

Finally, don't forget that most literature reviews require you to write up where you have searched, what you searched for (keywords) and also any limits you have applied (e.g. dates or language limits), so keep a record as you go. If you haven't got one already, it is worth signing up for an Ebsco account as you can save your search history to refer back to later.