Making a Difference to Healthcare in Leeds, UK: Seven Years of Measuring the Impact of NHS Knowledge and Library Services

ABSTRACT

The services offered by healthcare knowledge and library specialists offer tangible benefits for healthcare professionals, some of which can be measured through user feedback. The searches undertaken by this highly specialist workforce can save the time of health professionals and provide economic benefits to the UK NHS. The results of this seven-year study of knowledge and library service interventions in the Leeds health economy demonstrate the resulting primary impact for library and knowledge service users and estimates the local economic benefits of the evidence searches provided over the same period.

KEYWORDS:

• Benefits
• health professionals
• impact
• information skills training
• literature searching
• outcomes
• values

Disclosure statement

Dominic Gilroy, Heather Steele, Helen Swales and Ryan Ford are employed by NHS knowledge and library services within the NHS in Leeds. Dominic Gilroy was part of the working group which developed the knowledge and library services impact tool (3) and was involved in the study to evaluate the economic benefits of NHS knowledge and library specialists (5).

Additional information

Funding

No funding was made available for this study.