Exploiting Knowledge in Health Services

Citation

Hamilton, V. (2005), "Exploiting Knowledge in Health Services", Library Review, Vol. 54 No. 8, pp. 495-496. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530510619228

Many of the contributors to Exploiting knowledge in health services are practitioners and the editors are to be congratulated in persuading busy professionals to reflect on their work and pass on their experiences. The book is a companion volume to the 2000 book Managing knowledge in health services, now out of print but freely available at www.shef.ac.uk/∼scharr/mkhs. It is attractive with a decent size font and well laid out. The 21 chapters are brief and clearly titled, and each has keypoints at the end. There are also plenty of references for those who wish to read further.

The book is in three parts. The first covers the context of managing the knowledge base in health services. Despite the jacket claims that the book is written from a global perspective, the majority of this section focuses on the UK and indeed on England, although this limitation is often not made explicit. For example the chapter on “Clinical Governance and National Service Frameworks” does not explain that National Service Frameworks do not apply in Scotland, where a range of different titles have been used to describe national strategies for specific disease areas. The inconsistent use of the word “National” within UK “National Health Service” settings often causes problems for information staff and this could have been an opportunity to clarify such issues. However, there is much which will be of general interest and a great strength of the book is the inclusion of case studies. These are particularly valuable in areas such as “knowledge management” where buzzwords are bandied about (and job titles created) but no two people have the same understanding of the concept.

The latter two sections of the book are definitely more broadly applicable. The “managing the knowledge base” section addresses such general management issues as project management and collaborative working, specifically in the health libraries sector. “Using the knowledge base effectively: information sources and skills” focuses in particular on the skills required to support evidence‐based medicine.

Although patient access to information is mentioned as the first point in Graham Walton's introduction, this is not a focus of the book and the emphasis is on exploiting information for the benefit of health service staff. The chapter on “hybrid information services” may seem slightly dated to those working in academic environments – the problem there is not getting people to use electronic information but persuading them to rise from their computers and walk to consult printed sources when appropriate.

Overall, this book is of real interest to anyone working in a health library, especially in the UK, although those further afield will have to translate the Anglo‐centric references as appropriate in some of the more specific chapters. Some of these chapters will date more quickly than others but there is much that will provide useful information for practitioners wishing to take a step back and reflect on the services they provide.