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Information Support Roles Framework

This framework from NHS Education for Scotland defines the generic information support skills that are an integral part of day to day work of healthcare staff at all levels, but are currently often unacknowledged and under-developed. The framework describes how healthcare staff in their information support role can use information literacy skills as part of a person-centred approach. This framework aims to:

• engage, enable and empower all involved in health and healthcare to have skills to find, share and use appropriate quality-assured information
• raise awareness of the impact that skills, behaviours and attitudes can have when information is being
  provided or shared, across a wide range of health and well-being situations
• highlight that all those in health and social care (in and beyond the NHS) can be supported to meet their responsibility to foster these partnerships.
• be the first step for producing training and development resources to support those with an information support element in their role
  

Click here to download a full copy of the framework
Click here to download a summary of the framework


Online Information Services for Patients and the Public: Analysis of user needs; evaluation of current position; and recommendations for the future development in line with NHS 24.

This report from NHS Education for Scotland sets out the results of research undertaken in Scotland which explored the need of users in relation to information, advice and support. Some of the key findings were:

• significant numbers of people (1 in 5) would prefer doctors to give them any information they might need from the Internet, as opposed to finding it themselves, being helped to find it by doctors or other healthcare professionals, or being helped to find it, or being given it, by family and friends.
• This research highlighted the desperate need for online information to be constantly monitored and manually, as well as automatically, updated. This monitoring role, including the mechanisms for the filling of gaps and the provision of new content, will be a major undertaking.
• The integration of NES/NHS Inform patient and public information should preserve:
   - A choice for users, in terms of the availability of information at different levels of complexity. All the surveys and focus groups highlighted how important having access to, and having clear lists of, different levels of information, from basic to detailed scientific/research, was to users.
   - An array, or library, of information on a particular topic from different sources.
   - A single gateway to health and social care information.

The study also showed that two-thirds of the adult population in Scotland reported not using the Internet for health or social care information. The study confirmed that disadvantaged groups and the elderly are the least likely to use online information sources while being some of the groups which most need the kind of information such sources contain. The authors stated that it is imperative, therefore, to ensure (i) that other channels of information are pursued with the same vigour as the online route and (ii) ways to encourage and help people to seek health information online are devised, promoted and supported.

Click here to download a copy of the report