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Dynamic Health February Round-up: Updates: New and Revised Workplace Notes + Highlights: One Year of Dynamic Health! + World Cancer Day + Wear Red Day + Mental Health Nurses Day
02/06/2024
Library Staff
Mental Health, Nursing, Physicians, Recreation Therapy, Clinical Practice & Policy , Point-of-Care Tools, Paramedicine, Nurse Practitioners, Occupational Therapy, Dynamic Health

Dynamic Health round-up posts keep you informed about implementation and use of Dynamic Health at Nova Scotia Health. They highlight any new priority projects and events, as well as updates to our Workplace Notes and Custom Workplace Skills.

Updates: Reviewed Skills and Workplace Notes

We receive feedback submissions about Dynamic Health skills on an ongoing basis through the Suggest an Edit form and through partnerships with departments and teams.

This month we have a large list of updates due to our recent Skill Review push that closed January 31st, 2024. We continue to process submitted reviews and will report on more next month.

Reviewed: New Workplace Note

Reviewed: No Workplace Note

Highlights: One Year of Dynamic Health

February marks one year since we launched Dynamic Health with Nova Scotia Health customizations (Workplace Notes, Custom Skills, etc.). Thank you to all our collaborators, users and supporters. We include analytics below, including data from a system report run on January 26, 2024, that reflects our collective success this past year.

  • 70,609 unique Topic Section views
  • 1,157 Skills assigned and/or reviewed
  • 487 Workplace Notes published
  • 8 Custom Workplace Skills published
  • 5 Skills linked or embedded into new or updated Nova Scotia Health policy and/or LMS
  • 385 attendees at online education sessions
  • 139 post-session recording watches
  • 1,265 Personal user accounts created
  • 157.5 Continuing Education Hours Claimed

Dynamic Health is intended to make using evidence at the point-of-care easy for nursing and allied health care professionals. Using Dynamic Health procedures supports standardizing practice for nursing and allied health across the organization. Our implementation efforts target empowering leaders and staff to engage with evidence-based decision making through easy access to procedure level guidance. Procedures in Dynamic Health are reviewed and edited regularly by the publisher’s editorial team. Additionally, we track all changes from the publisher and cross-reference this information with all customizations made at Nova Scotia Health. Where relevant, we link to organization policy within Workplace Notes and Custom Skills.

The analytics above indicate excellent uptake in year one, with room to grow in terms of utilization of continuing education credits for individual professional development. We’re encouraged by the high number of Skills reviewed and annotated with Workplace Notes versus the more labour-intensive Custom Workplace Skills. Several groups have adopted Dynamic Health for nursing and allied health procedures. Dynamic Health continues to facilitate discussions about which nursing and allied health procedures require policy-level documentation versus practices that benefit from a procedure-first approach.

Health Promotion in February and Dynamic Health Topics

February 2024 marks the promotion of:

In recognition of these health promotion events, we encourage you to engage with the curated list of Dynamic Health content below.

If you spot any Skills below that you feel need a Workplace Note, consider being a reviewer! Fill out our Suggestions for Skills form with your notes and we will get in touch!

World Cancer Day

Wear Red Day

Mental Health Nurses Day

Dynamic Health Project Team

Amanda Revels
Professional Practice Leader
Interprofessional Practice & Learning, Western Zone

Leah MacDonald
Professional Practice Leader
Interprofessional Practice & Learning, COVID-19 Response

Katie McLean
Librarian Educator
Interprofessional Practice & Learning, Library Services

Margaret Meier
Policy Lead
Policy Office

Ann Slaunwhite
Library Technician
Interprofessional Practice & Learning, Library Services

Dynamic Health January Round-up: Updated Workplace Notes + Skill Review Deadlines + Alzheimer's Awareness Month + Let’s Talk Day
01/02/2024
Library Staff
Mental Health, Nursing, Physicians, Recreation Therapy, Social Work, Clinical Practice & Policy , Point-of-Care Tools, Paramedicine, Nurse Practitioners, Occupational Therapy, Dynamic Health

Dynamic Health round-up posts keep you informed about the implementation and use of Dynamic Health at Nova Scotia Health. They highlight any new priority projects and events as well as updates to our Workplace Notes and Custom Workplace Skills.

Skill Reviews Due by January 31, 2024

Our second skill review push is underway. A huge “Thank you!” to all of our volunteer reviewers! Reviewers received their assigned skill(s) to review earlier in December. All reviews must be submitted through the skill review form by January 31, 2024. If you have any questions about the process or would like assistance completing a review, reach out to us at DynamicHealth@nshealth.ca. We’re available by email or Teams to talk things through and provide guidance. Learn more about the Skill Review process on the Dynamic Health Support subject guide.

Health Promotion in January and Dynamic Health Topics

January 2024 marks the promotion of:

In recognition of these health promotion events, we encourage you to engage with the curated list of Dynamic Health content below.

If you spot any Skills below that you feel need a Workplace Note, consider being a reviewer! Fill out our Suggest an Edit form with your notes and we will get in touch!

Alzheimer's Awareness Month

Let's Talk Day

Dynamic Health Project Team

Amanda Revels
Professional Practice Leader
Interprofessional Practice & Learning, Western Zone

Leah MacDonald
Professional Practice Leader
Interprofessional Practice & Learning, COVID-19 Response

Katie McLean
Librarian Educator
Interprofessional Practice & Learning, Library Services

Margaret Meier
Policy Lead
Policy Office

Ann Slaunwhite
Library Technician
Interprofessional Practice & Learning, Library Services

Resource Spotlight: Clinical Handbook of Psychotropic Drugs
12/12/2022
Lana MacEachern
Mental Health, Physicians, Pharmacy, Patient Education

Clinical Handbook of Psychotropic Drugs is a must-have resource for psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and other mental health professionals. It provides a comprehensive summary of need-to-know information about psychotropic drugs, including:

  • Product availability
  • Indications/contraindications
  • Dosing
  • Interactions
  • Switching and augmentation strategies
  • Pediatric, geriatric and pregnancy considerations
  • Lab tests/monitoring

Clinical Handbook of Psychotropic Drugs helps you find what you need quickly and easily. Information is presented in an easy-to-read format using:

  • Bullet points
  • Comparison charts
  • Icons
  • Colour-coding

Library Services offers Clinical Handbook of Psychotropic Drugs in 2 formats:

Print (24th edition, 2021), available at most hospital library sites

Ebook (23rd edition, 2019), including printable patient information sheets for most drug categories

TIP From the Clinical Handbook of Psychotropic Drugs ebook, you can create a ProQuest Ebook Central™ user account. In the upper right corner of the ebook header, click on Sign In (A). Once you have created an account, you can highlight text, bookmark pages, and insert notes (B). Click the star icon (C) in the left-hand tool bar to view the annotations you've made and to jump to those sections of the ebook.

If you have any questions about Clinical Handbook of Psychotropic Drugs, or any other books or ebooks in our collection, please reach out to AskLibrary@nshealth.ca, or book a one-on-one consultation with a Library Services team member.

Lana MacEachern

Library Technician
Aberdeen Hospital, Northern Zone

Finding qualitative studies in CINAHL and APA PsycInfo®
09/02/2020
profile-icon Amanda Andrews
Mental Health, Nursing, Clinical Practice & Policy , Searching, Clinical Research

The field of research is vast. Deciding what type of study design to help answer your research question can be complicated. This post will outline what qualitative studies are, when to use them, and most importantly, how to find them in CINAHL Complete and APA PsycInfo®, formerly known as PsycINFO®. 

Qualitative studies are a valuable type of research which tend to be popular in the social sciences because they give insight into people’s behaviour. “Research following a qualitative approach is exploratory and seeks to explain ‘how’ and ‘why’ a particular phenomenon, or behavior, operates as it does in a particular context.” (simplypsychology.org, 2020)

In comparison to quantitative studies, which tend to focus on numeracy and systematic techniques, qualitative studies are directed more towards emotion, observation and opinion. There are several types of qualitative studies, such as focus groups, case studies and observation. 

Finding qualitative studies in CINAHL Complete

Let’s search CINAHL Complete for studies that answer the following research question: ‘How do young people cope with stress?’

  1. Start at the Databases A-Z page.
  2. Navigate to ‘C’ (by clicking on ‘C’ or simply by scrolling down) and click on CINAHL Complete. If you're connecting from home, you may be prompted to enter your Nova Scotia Health login. This is the same username and password you use to log in to your work email or computer.
  3. Using the search bar on the landing page, enter the search terms ‘stress’ and ‘coping.’
  4. There are 2 ways to limit results to qualitative studies:

I. In the Search Options, scroll down to Clinical Queries on the right-hand side and select:  

  • Qualitative - High Sensitivity, the broadest search. It will include all relevant material, but may also include materials that are less relevant.
    OR
  • Qualitative - High Specificity, the most targeted search. It will include only the most relevant result set, but may miss some other relevant materials.
    OR
  • Qualitative - Best Balance, will retrieve the best balance between sensitivity and specificity.

II. Scroll down to Publication Type on the right-hand side to choose publication types that use qualitative methods. 

  1. Click on the ‘Search’ button at the top and apply filters to the results as needed.

 

Finding Qualitative Studies in APA PsycInfo®

  1. Start at the Databases A-Z page.
  2. Navigate to ‘A’ (by clicking on ‘A’ or simply by scrolling down) and click on APA PsycInfo. If connecting from home, you may be prompted to enter your Nova Scotia Health login. This is the same username and password you use to log in to your work email or computer.
  3. Using the ‘Advanced Search’, enter the search terms ‘stress’ and ‘coping.’
  4. There are 2 ways to limit results to qualitative studies:

I. Scroll down to Methodology, located on the landing page. Select interview, qualitative study, or focus group to limit your results to a particular qualitative study type.

II. You can also use subject terms in the main search bar. Terms used could include qualitative research, grounded theory, interviews and observation methods to narrow your results to qualitative studies.

  1. Click on the ‘Search’ button at the top and apply filters to the results as needed.

Qualitative studies can be useful when seeking an understanding of motives, opinions and behaviours. You can also apply these tips when using other databases which allow you to refine results by methodology and publication type.

If you require further info on accessing qualitative studies, be sure to reach out to AskLibrary@nshealth.ca or book a one-on-one-consult with a librarian. We’re here to help!

Amanda Andrews

Librarian Educator
Cape Breton Regional Hospital, Eastern Zone

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