“New tricks for old dogs?” Providing an electronic Acute Current Awareness Service for clinical staff within the hospital setting

The universal drive to encourage all healthcare staff use best available evidence to make clinical judgements as described  in the work of David Sackett on Evidence Based Medicine, can only be regarded as a positive move for both patients and healthcare professionals alike. This concept has been seized upon by the National Health Service in the UK. One such initiative is the Acute Services Current Awareness Service (ASCAS)a web based  service hosted by the Greenfield Medical Library, Nottingham, UK. The scope of the service is decidedly broad, there are nine sections: In the news; New Reports and Guidelines; Research and Development, Continuing Professional Development; Medicine; Surgery, Nursing, Women and Children and Diagnostic and Allied Health. These sections are regularly updated using information obtained via the monitoring of over 150 key websites. ASCAS is available to all clinical staff regardless of discipline, rank or occupation, thus dispelling any idea that it is only for the “doctors”. The Department of Information Science Loughborough, UK are contributing to monitoring of information for inclusion and also undertaking the evaluation of the use and effectiveness of the service. Questions to be asked in the evaluation will centre on how effective the users found the information provided by the service in their everyday practice. The evaluation will also seek the opinion of non users about their reasons for non use. Early results show that users of the service have been drawn from more professions than the medical staff including: Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapist, Managers, Lecturers and Midwives. This can be regarded as  encouragement that the service is not viewed as exclusive medical territory. The  evaluation  commenced in July 2005. It is anticipated that the successful usage that has been already reported will be confirmed suggesting t hat a traditional current awareness  service can be  reinvented and “old dogs can learn new tricks”.