Communicating Risk in Health Information (London) - Tues 26 Jan 2016

ZOMG this sounds amazing.

Copied and pasted from their event registration website (from which you can buy a ticket, £240 max, cheaper for members): http://www.pifonline.org.uk/pif/?ee=73

 

 

 

Communicating Risk in Health Information

We are delighted to announce that bookings are now open for the 'Communicating Risk in Health Information' event on Tuesday 26 January 2016, to be held in London.

Risks and statistics are an essential part of patient information.  What is a person’s risk of developing a particular condition in their lifetime, or of having a certain symptom? What is the chance of a treatment or procedure working? What are the risks of getting different side-effects? And can people change these risk factors?

However, many patients are unable to comprehend basic statistics, never mind navigate their way through the reams of data that may come with health information comparing treatment options. As information and support professionals, our job is to make sure we can guide patients through the minefield of data and figures to help them feel confident in making their own decisions.

This one day event will: look at the challenges many patients experience when trying to understand risk; hear from experts in the field of communicating risk; and share case studies from health information producers who have addressed this in their work.

Presentations will include:

• Health literacy and numeracy in the UK (Community Health & Leaning Foundation)
• How can we clearly communicate risk information? (David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory, Centre for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge)
• Factors influencing the perception of side-effect risk information (Peter Gardner, Head of School of Psychology, University of Leeds)
• TBC Shared decision making and risk communication (Richard Thompson, Professor of Epidemiology & Public Health, Newcastle University)
• Best practice for clearly communicating risk (PiF, based on PiF Toolkit best practice)
• Using data visualisation to explain risks (Eluned Hughes, Breast Cancer Now)

The event will close with a practical group session that allows delegates to discuss the key challenges they face and how they can apply the findings or recommendations from the presentations in their work.
A full agenda is being developed and will be available here soon.

Through attending the event we hope delegates will develop:

• Increased awareness of numeracy and health literacy issues, and their impact on individuals’ everyday life
• Increased awareness of risk communication issues and impacts on individuals’ health and experiences of care
• Increased understanding of how to communicate risk clearly in health information
• Increased awareness of how other health information professionals and organisations approach communicating risk

This one day event costs £125+VAT to attend for PIF members (please login to the website before making your booking to receive the members rate), and £200+VAT for non-members.

We hope you can join us!

If you have any queries about this event please contact admin@pifonline.org.uk.

The PIF Team

Calling for the intersection of [teachers] in [London] who teach [Computer Science] & want to know about [CPD courses]

Where I work (QMUL) teaches Continuing Professonal Development (CPD) courses for teachers who'll be showing their pupils how to do Computer Science 'stuff' including programming and whatnot for the new GCSEs in Computer Science. This is a sort of train the trainers type of thing.

We've just sent out the latest issue of the cs4fn (Computer Science For Fun) magazine and included a note in it about the courses and a number of teachers have got in touch asking to be kept informed when new courses become available.

At the moment we're in Week 7 of a 10 week course and we're sorting out dates for the next courses. We've also secured some funding from the Mayor's Office as part of the London Schools Excellence Fund (LSEF) to run courses jointly with King's College London.

If you're a teacher in London (the courses are ONLY for teachers in London as that's what we're funded for) who would like to learn programming and also how to teach programming then ping me an email on cs4fn @ eecs.qmul.ac.uk and I'll add you to the list.

We've a blog http://qmcpd.blogspot.co.uk/ which has details of our previous courses and some other bits and pieces.

Of course we're not the only people who are teaching CPD courses to teachers - Computing At School (CAS) is collating information on programming courses around the UK, at http://community.computingatschool.org.uk/events

Programming and more - short courses for teachers of GCSE computing at @QMUL

Programming and more: CPD* for GCSE computing 
*CPD = continuing professional development

This is the third short course run by my colleagues at Queen Mary, University of London. The first ran over Wednesday evenings for 10 weeks and there was a second intensive week-long course over the Summer. My only real contribution is boiling water for the tea and some light admin, as I can neither program nor teach it ;)

The third follows the pattern of the first and so starting on Wednesday 2 October 2013 at 5pm teachers can come and learn some Python and tinker with a Raspberry Pi. The format is a short lecture to start with and then a session of programming.

There'll be free tea/coffee and biscuits too and there's a Sainsbury's across the road from the venue and a Co-op next to Stepney Green station for something a bit more substantial. That's not free alas ;)

Programming and more: CPD for GCSE computing
http://computingcpdautumn13-eorg.eventbrite.co.uk/
Queen Mary, University of London
Wednesday, 2 October 2013 at 17:00 - Wednesday, 4 December 2013 at 19:00
London, United Kingdom

Registration Information

Registration Type       Sales End      Price       Fee     
Course registration     2 Oct 2013     £150.00     £9.65     
Group discount          2 Oct 2013     £100.00     £6.65

Event details
This course is for teachers preparing to teach Computing at GCSE or beyond. The course focuses on programming using a textual language and on understanding the essential concepts of the workings of a computer.


The course will run for ten weeks, including during half term. Each session will last for two hours, from 5pm to 7pm. It will take place in the Engineering Building at Queen Mary, University of London, E1 4NS.

Programming Language: The main course language is Python, a popular language in schools, although the concepts you will learn using Python will be applicable to other languages.

Prerequisites: Programming will be taught from scratch but we recommend that you should have tried at least a little programming beforehand (for example, using Scratch, Kodu, Alice or a similar tool). It is not essential to have used a textual programming language before. 

Highlights include:

• The course fee includes a Raspberry Pi for each teacher to keep, used for programming and exploring computers, both during the course and in your own time.
• The course leaders are from Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London, the home of cs4fn, a respected resource for teachers and students about computing. As well as teaching undergraduate computer science, they have experience of talking in schools and producing fun computing activities for students.
• Flexible Study Pattern: Material will be available on QMUL’s VLE, which is accessible from anywhere and includes recorded lectures, forums and online tests. The study pattern provides flexibility, allowing for occassional unavoidable absence. The weekly sessions at QMUL will focus on practical programming work. To get the best out of the course, participants should expect to do additional study using the VLE.  

Topic outline

Week	Programming	How Computers Work
1	Python expressions and variables.	Component of the Raspberry Pi
2	Writing scripts; simple input and output.	The Operating System
3	Conditional statement; boolean expressions	Boolean logic and truth tables
4	While loops; finding faults	Binary representation
5	Dry running a program	Memory and storage
6	Arrays (lists)	CPU, caching and performance
7	Testing	Communication principles
8	Pseudo code and flowcharts	Internet components
9	Functions. Problem solving	Logic gates and boolean algebra
10	Using files; designing programs for file I/O	Binary adder circuits

 

Literature searches: formalising search and presentation of results

We run a number of literature searches for colleagues on a variety of topics. Personally I've used OVID Medline although I know other colleagues prefer PubMed - in OVID it's easy to tick a button to say 'include search strategy' when sending the results, I believe it's not too complicated to do so in PubMed either, or this can be copied and pasted.

We've decided to 'up our game' on the whole literature search 'thing' and document the processes more formally. As part of the new NHS accreditation process we're documenting certain processes in some detail anyway, but we'd like to be doing this even for our general enquiry service.

This will include (1) where we've searched (eg trusted locations such as Cochrane, and NHS Evidence as well as running literature searches and even considering 'grey literature'), (2) how we've searched (documenting our search strategies so that others can re-use or adapt them), and (3) any filters we've used (human, English language, review, years) and (3a) any ranking of the results.

We'll also be giving some thought to how we (4) present the results and (4a) how we seek feedback from the 'client'. Finally we need a process for (5) recording the enquiry / strategy and ensuring that we take any opportunity, either from client feedback or other great ideas that people have, to improve the processes by (6) continuing professional development.

Does anyone, particularly those working in medical health libraries, have a process in place from which we can pinch some ideas? I am suffering from blank page syndrome ;-)

Some of my thoughts below.
1. Locations to search (ie. search quality)
For grey literature I'd include things like ClinicalTrials.gov which lets you know what's coming over the horizon.
2. Search strategies / MeSH headings / explode / focus / keywords (search quality)
3. Filtering (eg selecting human / English language / review)
3a. Ranking the results by quality of evidence (in a sense this can be preselected by choosing a database with higher evidence quality)
4 & 4a. Presenting the results to the 'client' and seeking feedback - I think the feedback side of things is very important.
5. Saving / recording the search for future use
6. Continuing professional development