About Us

Who we are

Worcestershire Health Libraries (WHL) cover the entire Worcestershire health community.  WHL consists of 4 modern libraries based at Worcestershire Royal Hospital, Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, Kidderminster Hospital and Evesham Community Hospital.

The library team consists of information professionals and paraprofessionals dedicated to providing a responsive evidence-based information service to the healthcare community.

We understand that only the best available evidence will do where patient health care is concerned, and we are here to ensure that all local healthcare staff and teams can access the best evidence when and it is needed.

Our vision

Our vision is to harness the body of knowledge and exploit it at point of need so that the right information will be available to the right people in the right format at the right time.  We believe that the effective management of knowledge and information is essential for the provision of the best patient care.

The Knowledge Management Strategy 2013 – 2017 supports the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust’s Workforce and Organisational Development Strategy, which in turn helps achieve the Trust’s five year business plan.

The strategy has five key strategic objectives:

• To improve the quality and safety of patient care

• To contribute to the creation of a reflective learning culture

• To provide and promote access to the knowledge content base using appropriate technology

• To provide our staff and stakeholders with the facilities and skills to find, share, evaluate, organise and use knowledge and undertake research

• To reduce variation in clinical practice and improve communication between care settings through evidence based care pathways

To deliver these objectives, the Knowledge and Library Team will:

• Focus on getting information into clinical teams and areas

• Ensure staff have access to the knowledge base that provides right information at the right time

• Work collaboratively with higher education and the public sector

• Seek out opportunities to develop pathways that can streamline services, share knowledge and reduce variation

• Provide training to staff to utilise and maximise access to information at the point of care

• Assist in the creation of document management systems to enable effective retrieval of core documents, guidelines and policies