Knowledge is like medicine - it can go out of date and become harmful (or just be less effective than something else that has come along).

To maintain your practice it is important to stay abreast of emerging developments in your field. This page offers a number of ways that you can tune in to the evidence you need to hear about and manage your information intake.

Keeping up with the latest issues of the key journals for your profession can be a great way to get a feel for new developments.  You probably have a good idea of the most interesting titles in your field but ask around your colleagues to get a feel for titles you might benefit from reading.

Here are some options for keeping current with journals:

• KnowledgeShare table of contents alerts (KCH users only). KnowledgeShare is a platform we use to manage evidence alerts and literature searches for our KCH users. KCH users can now request table of contents alerts via KnowledgeShare. Fill in this form and we will set you up within 5 working days, where possible. 
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• BrowZine Alerts (GSTT or KCH). GSTT or KCH staff can follow these steps for BrowZine alerts

  • First sign-up for a free BrowZine account to start adding titles to your bookshelf
  • Next, search or browse for title of interest
  • Finally, click ‘Add to Bookshelf’
  • When new issues are published, you will receive an email with table of contents the first weekend of the following month
• Other methods
  • Most ejournals will have an option to sign up for an email alert for new issues via their website and this can be a good way to sign up for a small number of titles.  The downside is this can involve multiple logins and some searching around. 
  • An alternative is to use a single system that handles multiple journal titles via a single platform.  A good example here is JournalTOCs which is free to use.  You do need to register but this simple site allows you to sign up to receive emails from thousands of titles.  

The Library at the PRUH prepares regular email bulletins for King's College Hospital Staff.  These are tailored to the needs of the Trust and include links to the full text of journal articles and reports where available.

Please complete the online form to sign up to receive an alert in your area(s) of interest. All articles listed are either freely available online or can be accessed using your KCH NHS OpenAthens account.

Available alerts:

• Ten Tasters - fortnightly update from key medical journals
• Nursing News - fortnightly update of nursing journal articles
• Leadership & Management Update - monthly overview of key developments that impact on the NHS and King's College Hospital
• Midwifery Monthly - monthly journal update of midwifery articles
• Focus on King's - monthly overview of multi-professional articles published by King's staff
• Physio Focus - monthly journal update of physiotherapy articles
• Occupational Therapy Focus - monthly journal update of occupational therapy articles
• Dietetics Focus - monthly journal update of nutrition and dietetics articles
• SLT Focus - monthly journal update of speech and language articles
• Making People Count - monthly synopsis of articles relevant to workforce priorities
• Education Bulletin - monthly synopsis of articles relevant to multi-professional education within the NHS
• Divergence Digest - a monthly neurodivergence bulletin

 Your details will not be used for any other purpose than to manage the distribution of the alerts.

An alternative way to update yourself is via listening to Podcasts.  These are a bit like a radio show but available for download to listen to at your convenience.  Most smart phones will have a podcast app you can use to manage your listening.

Things to listen to?

BMJ Journal podcasts - not just the BMJ but other titles too

Inside Health - catch up on the regular radio 4 show

ChewsHealth -  Physio Matters

HEFT EMCAST - Emergency Medicine

A huge selection via iTunes

KnowledgeShare is available to staff at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.  This system can help you to keep up to date with current research to support your clinical practice, decision-making and professional development.

Simple sign up

You can register for KnowledgeShare via our online form.  

Alternatively, you can sign up directly from the KnowledgeShare website, using your OpenAthens login.  If you do get stuck then please use the support contacts and we will be happy to help.

Sign up for Evidence Updates

KnowledgeShare Evidence Updates are highly personalised and targeted to you.  They focus on the evidence that will change practice, and the latest publications on quality, safety, education and the patient experience aiming to bring you what you need to know and no more.

During registration you will be invited to describe your main professional interests.  We will create a profile for you and once you start receiving the updates you can reply to ask us to tweak things if it is not quite right.  Your interests can be broad (e.g. Managing and leading people) or more specific (e.g. Hypertension) and you can restrict things to your setting or a patient age range. 

KnowledgeShare includes guidelines, policy documents and a wide range of summarised evidence so that you will not be inundated with primary research articles. You have the option to make your contact details and interests visible to all members of KnowledgeShare in order to promote knowledge sharing and networking, or alternatively you can restrict your details to just being visible to library staff.

An alternative route to updates is to use RSS feeds and a feed reader.  

RSS feeds are a means by which people can publish a stream of new items from a site.  Many sites will provide these and you will see the RSS symbol where they are in use.

RSS feeds are great for keeping up with latest developments.  They are frequently available for Journals (JournalTOCs uses them to prepare the content for the alerts it sends) but they can also be found for podcasts, blogs and other websites that update regularly.

No great technical expertise is required to use RSS to stay up to date as there are websites designed to manage your viewing of them - allowing you to see what new items have come in, save and share things of interest.  

The most widely used website is Feedly.  Feedly supports all sorts of logins (Google / Microsoft / twitter etc) so you will likely be able to use one you already have.  Once signed up click "Add content" to open a directory of RSS Feeds that you can subscribe to.  If the site you want is not in the directory just look for the RSS sign on their page - right click the sign to copy a link to the feed and this can then be pasted in.

You could try the King's Fund - Health Management and Policy Alert.

All NHS staff have access to the Knowledge and Library Hub as well as to specialist healthcare databases (Medline, CINAHL, Health Management (HMIC) and so on) to support their research interests, These allow you to carry out searches when you need to but can also be used for staying up to date for current awareness.  By saving your search you can not only come back to it at a later date but can also set up an alert to receive an email when new articles are added which match the search. 

If you are using the Hub you can set up an alert easily by clicking Create Alert next to the Search button.

For help setting up alerts on the specialist healthcare databases see the guidance provided on the Hub's Resources for advanced searching page.

Many health professions and specialties can find useful material for updating via specialist sites, professional bodies and other resources.  Have a look for things in your discipline.  For example:

NICE publish a number of newsletters and alerts

NiHR Signals offers summaries of important new research

The OTSeeker database offers alerts for new content on Occupational Therapy

There are monthly evidence in your inbox updates from PEDro for Physiotherapists.

The RCSEng offer a highly tailored set of Current Awareness Updates for their members

The College of OT prepare regular Hot Topics

In most cases you can set up a regular email or look for an RSS feed to follow.

The NHS WT&E Knowledge Management Service produce a number of bulletins to keep you up to date with the latest publications and research on different themes relating to workforce, education and training, as follows:

• Education bulletin – a monthly update on medical education with easy-to-read summaries of the latest research, policies and initiatives
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion bulletin – a weekly summary of research and news covering equality, diversity, inclusion and widening participation relevant to Workforce, Training and Education
• eWIN – the Workforce Information Network, a collection of knowledge resources on the NHS Learning Hub, bringing together eWIN case studies, hot topics and overviews
• In the Know – a monthly round-up of evidence related to education, workforce and the bigger health system picture)
• Knowledge and Library Services Technology bulletin – a monthly round-up covering emerging technologies in knowledge and library services.
• Making People Count – a monthly OD/ HR and workforce focused bulletin
• Primary Care bulletins – a monthly update, on reshaping and future proofing primary care
• Technology Update – a weekly update covering the three areas of the Topol review (Genomics, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Medicine)
• Workforce Times – a weekly workforce transformation update