Most hospitals will have a Library or Education centre. You are entitled to join as either a student on placement there or as a member of staff (includes bank staff). This will give you access to their print books and you can also request an Open Athens account. If you are on placement at the hospital you may be offered an introductory session by the library (Education centre). We recommend that you attend so that you can take full benefit of the additional resources that the NHS provides. If this doesn't happen, visit the library and ask to be signed up. You can find a list of NHS libraries here.
Open Athens
The NHS uses Open Athens to provide access to its electronic resources. This is different to the University which uses something called Shibboleth or Institutional access. Currently provided by the NHS libraries or the Ambulance service library you will only get an Open Athens account for the duration of your placement (or employment) and may need to re-apply but some Trusts will give access for the duration of your course. You just need to remember that it's Athens for NHS resources and Shibboleth for University resources.
Similar to OneSearch this hub searches the NHS core collection of library resources and also gives quick access to NICE guidelines and BMJ best practice. It provides access to some collections that the University does not subscribe to, such as the British Nursing Index and Embase, as well as some we do, such as CINAHL.
You will need an Open Athens account to view the full-text, search individual collections or access BMJ Best Practice. View the guide to using the Library hub.
BMJ Best practice is a clinical decision support tool, providing the evidence for every step of diagnosis and treatment.
British Nursing Index provides the references to articles in the most relevant UK nursing and midwifery journals. The full-text may be available in other collections.
Embase is a comprehensive biomedical research database.
Evidence Search. This was the NICE search engine but will disappear on the 31st March 2022. You can still access all the following resources from the NICE website.
- NICE Guidance
- Pathways
- Clinical knowledge Summaries
- BNF and BNFC
Local content. NHS libraries are run by individual Trusts who may have purchased additional content. Check your local library for more detail.
A suite of online tutorials provided by Health Education England, supporting every aspect of healthcare. You can access most modules with a free registration but for them to count towards your CPD you need to log in with Open Athens.
See the guide on how to set up a free account e-LfH account creation.