Learning from public health practice: the development of a library of community-centered practice examples

BACKGROUND

Valuable learning derived from public health practice can be captured through practice-based case studies, also known as practice examples. Practice examples of participatory interventions supplement the evidence base by providing information on the complexities of implementation in communities. This paper reports on a Public Health England project to build a bank of community-centered practice examples based on robust processes of collection and curation.

METHODS

The multidisciplinary project had three phases: (i) development and piloting a process to collect practice examples, (ii) refining review processes and gathering further examples via national and regional teams (iii) maintenance of an accessible collection on the library platform.

RESULTS

The project resulted in a searchable collection of 55 practice examples illustrating participatory approaches in public health practice. The collection shows diversity in terms of settings, population, focus and type of approach used to work with communities. A secondary outcome was the development of generic guidance and templates for further collections on public health topics.

CONCLUSIONS

This project illustrates how information on the implementation of community-centered approaches in real-life contexts can be gathered and disseminated through a transferable process. Having collections of practice examples supports knowledge exchange in public health as learning is shared.

Learning resource needs of UK NHS support staff

BACKGROUND

A report on the findings of research into the learning resource needs of support staff conducted at York Hospital.

METHODS

A qualitative method of focus groups was used to explore the views and experiences of support staff. This provided a rich source of data and allowed an often overlooked group to give their own experiences of learning and libraries. This was supplemented by one-to-one interviews using more in-depth questions. A literacy and numeracy test gave a general picture of essential skill levels within the sample group.

RESULTS

An improvement in communication to support staff needs to take place to ensure that all support staff know about the library, how and where to access training and obtain a network computer password. The project confirmed the need to expand library resources for support staff. It was found that there were no obvious essential skills resources within the Trust and a lack of awareness of essential skill issues.

CONCLUSION

The learning needs of support staff need to be addressed sensitively. Many have had unfavourable experiences. Lack of access to computers and information technology (IT) training contributed to the group favouring written communication. More work needs to be done on essential skills for all staff.