Looking for clinical skills advice? Look no further than Clinicalskills.net!

David Brown, Academic Liaison Librarian for Health Sciences, explores the new Library resource Clinicalskills.net.

---

Many students struggle to get to grips with the huge range of clinical procedures that they come across on placement. Clinicalskills.net, a new online resource from the Library, can help you with illustrated procedures and suggested reading for a range of topics, giving you an opportunity to reinforce your learning from practice.

What’s available? 

The procedures on Clinicalskills.net cover a range of themes from Adult, Child and Primary Care with more areas (such as Midwifery) to be added over the coming months. You can browse for procedures based on theme, or search for a specific procedure.

What does each procedure include?

Each procedure includes an introduction highlighting the rationale and key points to be aware of, before showing an illustrated, step-by-step outline of the procedure with additional narrative. After the procedure you will find a list of references, alongside suggestions for further key reading and information on when the procedure was last updated.

Mike Parker, Lecturer in Acute and Critical Care Nursing, notes that the platform “allows students to save and print PDFs thus enabling them to develop a bespoke library of clinical skills”. Click on the PDF link at the top of the procedure to download. 

How do I get access?

David Brown, Health Sciences
Librarian

Use the link on either the Health Sciences Subject Guide or the E-resources Guide for access. If you have any questions about using Clinicalskills.net, please contact David Brown, the Academic Liaison Librarian for Health Sciences, via lib-healthsci@york.ac.uk.

The Library holds a range of other resources to support clinical skills training, including electronic access to the Royal Marsden Manual of Clinical Nursing Procedures. You will also find numerous books on clinical skills via YorSearch.

On Immunity: an inoculation

In the next edition to his Night shelf donations, Stephen Town tackles the issues around immunisation.

---

Biss, E., On Immunity, in the University Library at Y 6.079 BIS

I bought this book through having an interest in the immune system; having a wife who is deliberately immunosuppressed, following organ transplantation, creates a significant personal dimension to this field of biology.

Eula Biss is however not intent on covering this angle; her personal stake arises from the dilemma of mothers facing the question of childhood vaccination.

Photo: Protection for life via Compfight.
Used under a CreativeCommons licence 

This dilemma exists mainly in the minds of middle-class US mothers, and it is largely from that perspective that the book is written. Biss draws on her own new mother paranoia in a frank and honest way, and ranges widely across language, science and society, with such imagination and obsessive research that one is surprised in equal measure to the irritation one feels about those who ignore the scientific evidence and withdraw from vaccination programmes, putting everyone at new risk from lack of herd immunity.

Biss discusses this boundary between individual and collective interests in what is a classic digressive essay, with some engaging humour and ‘entangled language’.