Finding health information – a researcher’s perspective

Sarah Condell PhD

HSE Nursing & Midwifery R&D Lead

Who am I?

Nurse & Midwife (8 years in practice)

Educator (11 years)

Educational Management (3 years)

Academia (1 year)

Research Development (10 years)

Research & Development (3 years)

► Clinical Effectiveness – EBP.

Late career, mid-life researcher!

CINAHL catalogues and index cards

to

Research repositories and referencing software

Library User (professionally and personally) and Information Consumer!

BUT

not a typical researcher! (conducting research is not my primary role as no strategic focus on

research in ONMSD)

Rather than deep area of interest – broadness

Person vs content focused searching

Topics (N&M, Research Capacity Building, Patient Safety & HSR)

Disciplines (Sociology, Psychology)

Professionals (N&M, AHP, Medics)

Broad Experiences

Finding literatureFinding peer reviewersAppraising research proposals*Synthesising literatureCommissioning studies or systematic reviews*Data analysis*PublishingDeveloping a repository (!)

User Characteristics: 1 Habitual

Tendency to use the known – what, who etcNew habits require time to developWorking with old systems is a barrierStyle versus substanceResponding to stimulus • email alerts of journal listing, • Google scholar, • research scans,• other email alerts – CHAIN.

Versus:

User Characteristics: 2 Fickle

Ease of access and use

Timeliness – peer review vs grey (↑)

Ego – ResearchGate

Curiosity & competitiveness

Experience of Repositories – 4S

Strategic – live mid 2009

Sweat & toil – 100+ abstracts

Sustainability – NCNM closed end 2011

Sad

Thank You

And enjoy the bank holiday…