Library News

In this post, learn how you and your team can work with a Patient/Family Advisor (PFA) to help make your patient pamphlets people-centred.

Nova Scotia Health pamphlets are created for patients and family members to read and use before, during, and after what are often critical points in their health care experience. Patients and their families, friends, and caregivers need to be able to understand our printed instructions and health information. Our materials should help patients to understand and follow health care directives, supporting both self-care and patient safety. To ensure our pamphlets are people-centred, we rely on you, the pamphlet content creators, to actively engage with your patient population and clientele throughout the pamphlet creation and updating process.

Pamphlet review process

We know that incorporating feedback and suggestions takes time and effort. The pamphlet review process may involve several drafts, multiple team members, and many emails back and forth between you and the Patient Education Team. This important process can greatly impact the direction of the project and the final document. This is why we strongly recommend including PFAs in your working group early in your project. 

When the need for a new pamphlet is identified, or a pamphlet is due for updating, the first step is to identify appropriate PFAs available to contribute to your pamphlet project. Let them know the scope of the project, the approximate time commitment, and how they will be asked to contribute.

Need help engaging with your patient population? Check out these Nova Scotia Health resources on public engagement: 

• Engaging Patients and Communities in a Time of Physical Distancing
• Engaging Patient and Family Advisors: A guide for Quality Improvement & Safety Teams and Planning/Advisory Groups
• Tips from Patient/Family Advisors

No time like the present

When PFAs are consulted too late in the process, it may be harder to incorporate their input or make changes to the established structure of a document. This may cause delays, which can be frustrating for all team and project members, including PFAs. When PFAs are included from the start, meaningful input can be incorporated at all stages of the project. This helps to ensure the project starts off on the right track and is in line with patients’ and family members’ expectations.

It’s also important to involve PFAs in the review stage as well, sharing a final draft with the understanding that you may receive last minute changes or valuable feedback before going to print, and having the flexibility to incorporate them. Keep in mind, when PFAs are included from the beginning, last minute changes are often small and easier to make than when they are included late in the game.

Involving PFAs in a pamphlet project

PFAs can contribute to a pamphlet project in many ways. Here are just a few examples:

• Ask them to review the pamphlet for patient-friendly messaging and tone.
• Ask them to provide feedback on the pamphlet content.
  • Do they have any questions that were not answered in the pamphlet?
  • What information did they wish they had before or after their clinic visit?
  • Were the images in the pamphlet helpful or distracting?
• Ask them to provide feedback on the flow of the pamphlet.
• Ask them to provide feedback on the readability of the pamphlet—Were there medical terms that should have been explained that weren’t?
• Ask them to complete and return a Consumer Evaluation of the pamphlet.

Remember, engagement requires both give and take. The Patient Education Team is here to support you throughout the process! We can provide feedback forms, suggest ways to support a review, and provide you with the documents you need to get started on your pamphlet project. 

To find more patient engagement resources on the Intranet, select the “Resources” tab along the top, then scroll down to the “Engagement” section.

Visit our Content Creator Toolkit or email pamphlets@nshealth.ca to get started on your pamphlet project today!

Kallen Rutledge

Librarian Educator
Nova Scotia Hospital, Central Zone

The following pamphlets were revised or created in September 2020. Please contact pamphlets@nshealth.ca with any questions about patient pamphlets. You can search for pamphlet PDFs by title, keyword, or four digit pamphlet number in the library catalogue, or see the complete listing of active titles in our Print Code Index.  

Arabic Translations
AR85-2124 NEW Blood Transfusion (English: WH85-1200, French: FF85-1811)  

Cardiovascular System 
WG85-2130 NEW Thoracic Endovascular Aortic Repair (TEVAR)  

Digestive System
WI85-0592 Hernia Surgery as an Outpatient  

Emergency & Public Health
WA85-2129 NEW Your Emergency Department Visit - Fishermen's Memorial Hospital  

French Translations (en français)
FF85-2101 NEW Opération de la paupière (English: WW85-0576)
FF85-2102 NEW Dix choses à savoir au sujet du deuil (English: WD85-0975)
FF85-2103 NEW Anesthésie par bloc nerveux pour supprimer la douleur pendant l’opération (English: PM85-1377)
FF85-2104 NEW Analgésie épidurale après une opération (English: PM85-1378)
FF85-2105 NEW Services de physiothérapie en Nouvelle-Écosse (English: WB85-1438)
FF85-2106 NEW Asthme (English: CB85-1454)
FF85-2107 NEW Delirium après une chirurgie cardiaque (English: WG85-1480)
FF85-2108 NEW Services de pharmacie d’hôpital (English: QV85-1501)
FF85-2109 NEW Après votre intervention (English: WP85-1509)
FF85-2111 NEW Comment appliquer votre onguent stéroïde (English: WP85-1607)
FF85-2112 NEW Opération du ptosis (paupière tombante) (English: WW85-1989)
FF85-2131 NEW Votre visite au service des urgences - Hôpital Fishermen’s Memorial (English: WA85-2129)  

Hospitals
WX85-1213 Writing to Transplant Recipients and Their Families
WX85-2056 Patient and Family Ethics Tool - Help with Ethical Issues
WX85-2084 Patient and Family Ethics Tool (rack card)  

Nephrology
WQ85-1760 Dalteparin (Fragmin®) to Prevent Clotting During Hemodialysis  

Nursing Units
WZ85-1022 Welcome to the Medical Day Unit (MDU) - Victoria General Hospital  

Nutrition & Food
LC85-0624 How to Puree Foods

Carmen Dorey

Library Technician, Patient Pamphlets
Nova Scotia Hospital, Central Zone

As the amount of COVID-19 evidence grows, it is important to be able to zero in on a specific type of evidence. With the abundance of editorials and commentaries on COVID-19, it may be helpful for clinicians and researchers to focus on finding articles that report specifically on COVID-19 therapeutic interventions. These and other article types are currently available through various resources, including curated COVID-19 collections that contain primary study reports and evidence syntheses. However, databases like Embase® offer benefits such as advanced searching features and unique content from a wide variety of scholarly journals.

This post will walk you through searching in Embase® (Elsevier) for COVID-19-related randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which are typically regarded as the ideal study design for therapeutic interventions.

About Embase®

Embase® is a biomedical database with emphasis on European pharmaceutical and psychiatric literature. The database contains article citations and abstracts, with links to article full text where available. Note that Embase® contains research that has been accepted for publication in scholarly journals; it does not contain pre-/post-prints or unpublished clinical trial data related to COVID-19.

Pre-developed COVID-19 search strings

To save you both time and effort, pre-developed COVID-19 search strings are ready for you to copy and paste into various databases, including Embase®. The following resources include COVID-19 search strings developed specifically for Embase®:

• Medical Library Association (MLA): COVID-19 Literature Searches
• Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH): CADTH COVID-19 Search Strings
  Note: You will need to copy and paste the search one line at a time.
• Nova Scotia Health Library Services: COVID-19 Search Strategies

Searching Embase® for COVID-19 RCTs

1. Copy a pre-developed COVID-19 search string for Embase® from one of the above resources.
2. Select Embase® from Library Services’ Databases A-Z page.
3. On the Embase® homepage, paste the pre-developed COVID-19 search string into the top search bar.

4. Click on the Show…results button on the right-hand side.
5. From the Results Filters on the left, click on the Study types drop-down menu.
6. Select randomized controlled trial (not randomized controlled trial topic).

7. Click on the Apply button at the top of the Results Filters panel.
8. Before browsing the search results, you may want to select Show all abstracts (A) or change the Sort by order (B) from the top of the results list, depending on your preferences.

9. To view the full text of an article, click on View Full Text.

10. If full text is not available, click on Check for full text at NSHA, then Request document via Local Document Delivery System to request a copy of the article.

For more COVID-19 resources, see our COVID-19 Research guide.

Questions? Email AskLibrary@nshealth.ca or book a consultation with a library staff member.

Kristy Hancock

Librarian Educator