The day started with a phone call from a senior manager. He'd seen the Guardian report about higher mortality rates for people admitted to hospitals at weekends and wanted to see the original article. Easy! We have a subscription to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine:
N Freemantle, M Richardson, J Wood, D Ray, S Khosla, D Shahian, WR Roche, I Stephens, B Keogh, and D Pagano
Weekend hospitalization and additional risk of death: An analysis of inpatient data
J R Soc Med jrsm.2012.120009; published ahead of print 2 February 2012, doi:10.1258/jrsm.2012.120009
See also Margaret McCartney's commentary on this: http://www.margaretmccartney.com/blog/?p=1307
As for the rest of the day:
- I ran some searches, in the course of which I came across something I feel I must keep secret, at least from the Burra Memsahib, the UCLA Hoarding Severity Scale–she'l'l have me tested before you can say knife.
- I ran some searches about the costs of wound care in the community
- I came across an online learning module on doctors and social networking:http://www.healthinfomatters.com/elearning/onlineprofessionalism/4c1.html
- I answered a question about the Brighton LibTeachMeet
- I helped with an urgent document supply request
- I ran a search on errors in paediatric prescribing
As the afternoon wore one, there was a gradual exodus of staff till, for the final hour, there were just two of us. In that last hour, news came in that our service has won commendations in two classes of the Sally Hernando awards. I can claim no credit for this, it was all work done long before I arrived. To round the day off, I answered a question on lis-medical about the link between library use and academic achievement: the answer was, as it always is, Huddersfield.