“number of patients that need to be treated for one to benefit compared with a control” – Bandolier Glossary Number needed to treat is a useful measure when evaluating the benefit (or harm) of a new treatment. Sometimes that’s not terribly clear from the articles which are published (although there are calculations you can do […]

Essence of Care 2010 is now available. It contains 12 benchmarks, following a consultation exercise late in 2009. It aims to support localised quality improvement, by providing a set of established and refreshed benchmarks supporting front line care across care settings at a local level.  The benchmarking process outlined in Essence of Care 2010 helps practitioners […]

The recent news stories about a new drug resistant super-bug were ignited by “Emergence of a new antibiotic resistance mechanism in India, Pakistan, and the UK: a molecular, biological, and epidemiological study“  Kumarasamy,KK; Toleman, MA; Walsh, TR et alThe Lancet Infectious Diseases, Early Online Publication, 11 August 2010 doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(10)70143-2  Lancet Infectious Diseases provides some Reflection and Reaction Full […]

The Medical Library is delighted to announce that the Oxford Textbook of Medicine (5th edition) is now available as an e-book to all library users.“The Oxford Textbook of Medicine is the foremost international textbook of medicine. Unrivalled in its coverage of the scientific aspects and clinical practice of internal medicine and its subspecialties, it is a […]

 BBC Radio 4’s Inside the Ethics Committee is back since last Tuesday – you can listen again or download to your MP3 player the last series and the more recent programmes. Today’s programme looked at “When should a seriously ill child have a say in their treatment?” and last weeks at “Should a man who believes […]

With the publication of the White Paper “Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS”  there are several overviews which you might find useful: The Knowledge & Library Service at Newham University Hospital NHS Trust have created a blog post which brings together both their synopsis and also many comments from other sources, including Kings Fund, NHS Confederations, […]

The Oxford based Centre for Evidence Based Medicine have made a wide selection of powerpoints available from their website.Titles include: Introduction to EBM – Paul Glasziou RCT Appraisal – Dan Lasserson Systematic Reviews – Paul Glasziou Did you know that CEBM also have a YouTube channel?  http://www.youtube.com/user/cebmed This is just one example of the content: “A Clinical Introduction […]

http://www.healthknowledge.org.uk/interactive-learning/finding-and-appraising-the-evidence Overall introduction to critical appraisal Finding the evidence Randomised controlled trials Systematic reviews Economic evaluations Making sense of results

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2010/jun/24/sense-about-science-lecture-2010 http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=412187&c=1 http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/other/297/  an independent charitable trust promoting good science and evidence in public debates Dr Fiona Godlee, editor of the BMJ, delivers the annual Sense About Science lecture on the theme ‘It’s time to stand up for science once more’

image from Queen’s Library, Flickr UPDATE (30th June 2010): thank you for your patience – the catalogue is back, better than ever, but looking pretty much exactly the same!