Inside Tomorrow's Pharmacist (2001)

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Information management

Information management by Michelle Styles

As little as 20 years ago, before widespread use of the internet, finding information was difficult. Teams of people were employed in libraries to help students find research papers and news was what had happened in the world yesterday. Today, however, finding information is relatively easy. The problem is that we simply have too much of it and we have to learn how to manage it more effectively. We are constantly bombarded with information from different sources — patients, doctors, newspapers, journals and television. We have to learn how to discriminate quickly between good and bad information and to discard what we don't need to know.

The science fiction writers of the 1970s promised us that the information age would solve all our problems. We would be able to find the answer to everything at the touch of a button and this would free up so much time for us that we would then enter a new age — the leisure age. However, while revolutionising the way in which we work, the information age has not liberated us. We have to devote more and more time to managing all the information we receive and instead of relieving the pressure, we are busier than ever.

Information technology in general and the internet in particular have changed beyond all measure the way in which we receive and process information. The latest live cricket and tennis scores ticker tape across computer screens, news headlines flash onto your desktop and constant e-mails interrupt your flow of work. We feel we must know everything — if a colleague tells us about an interesting paper or article they have read, instead of being interested in the article's contents, we feel guilty that we have somehow missed it and resolve to do better next time. We are in danger of the pursuit of information becoming an end in itself rather than the means to an end.

Take control

The key to successfully managing all the information we receive is not to let it manage us. We need to be in charge and call the shots! Being constantly bombarded with trivia can lead to the onset of 'automatic numb' where we assume that everything we read is of little value and when the vital information comes along, we miss it.

E-mail is an excellent way of com-municating rapidly with others. However, it is easy to let it interrupt and dominate your work. Check your e-mail once or twice a day only. If you are using a networked e-mail system such as Outlook, set it up so that only urgent messages are displayed immediately. Be wary of signing up for free e-mail news alerts from lots of different news agencies and journals. While these can be useful, you have to ensure that you set aside dedicated time to read them. If you feel cut off from the world without news stories being sent to you, then choose one service and read the headlines once a day. And never enter competitions that require you to give your e-mail address — not unless you really want lots of junk e-mail.

Be selective

Most of us feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information available and we give up trying to manage it. However, if you take a systematic approach and stick with it, the task becomes easier. You need to learn to filter the information so that you retain and act on only what is important to know and what is good quality. Be selective and ruthless! Remember that the point of information is that you use it to 'inform' your professional and clinical practice and to help you to decide whether you need to change what you do or how you do it.

Decide what you need to know to enable you to practise effectively. All pharmacists need to know about drug alerts or withdrawals, changes in the law, changes in drug licensing and new drugs. Notices of very urgent matters such as drug withdrawals are usually sent by fax from the health authority or by e-mail alert. Less urgent matters are usually covered in newsletter or journal articles. It is worth setting aside at least half an hour per week to read The Pharmaceutical Journal in depth. This will give you a broad overview of what is happening in areas of the profession other than your chosen specialty and will alert you to any major changes you must know about. It will also help point you towards information or research findings that you may need to explore in more detail. For example, it often publishes abstracts from important papers in medical journals and new guidelines from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), and if these are relevant, you may decide to examine them in more detail.

Specialise

Decide what type of information you need to enable you to keep abreast of developments in medicine and science. This will depend on your sphere of practice and the types of patient you see. For example, if you choose to work in hospital practice, you may specialise in a particular clinical area and you will need to be familiar with recent advances in therapeutics in that area. If, on the other hand, you choose to practise in the community, you will probably need to know more about health news and the medicines and diseases that are mentioned in the media. As the most accessible health care professionals, pharmacists are often asked for impartial advice about drugs and products mentioned in the media and it is essential to be well informed and have easy access to good information sources.

Wherever you practise, you will need to keep up-to-date in order to retain credibility. Find out the best sources for obtaining the information you need. New research is published all the time and it is essential at least to be aware of the latest thinking, and hence the latest research papers. You cannot expect to get through your entire pharmacy career by reading The Pharmaceutical Journal alone, so consider subscribing to and reading other journals. Be realistic — you cannot possibly read and appraise fully the articles in 12 different journals each week, so choose one or two and read them thoroughly. Remember that most major research findings tend to be published in the major medical journals so consider subscribing to one of these, for example, the BMJ or The Lancet. If you cannot afford to subscribe to journals, most have websites that allow free access to abstracts from the main papers. Most publishing houses are willing to supply sample copies of journals which will help you decide whether the style and content is suitable to meet your needs.

If you are short of time, read only the articles that are most likely to impact upon your practice. Consider sharing the load with one or two friends by starting a journal club where each of you undertakes to read a particular journal and share your findings with the others.

Be critical

Be critical about what you read. We read certain newspapers and magazines with a degree of scepticism but when articles are published in learned medical journals, we assume that, because they have been edited by experts and subjected to external peer review, the information in them is factually correct. Yet even the best journals can be caught out and publish poor quality papers. With experience, you will learn which journals publish good quality papers and which publish consistently poor ones.

If you feel that reading research papers is not for you, then consider subscribing to a different type of journal, for example, one that publishes only systematic reviews of clinical trials or evidenced-based articles or one which is dedicated to an overview of one or two therapeutic areas or diseases per issue.

Be organised

You can't expect to remember the detail of everything you read, so you will need to set up some form of indexed filing system. Instead of filing entire volumes of journals together, it is probably better to remove or copy articles and file them in the way that suits you best, for example, by BNF category or by disease area. It is useful to index and cross-reference the articles so that you can retrieve them easily when you need them, but don't forget to review your file periodically and remove articles that have been superseded.

Pass it on

And finally, remember that information is just knowledge until you pass it on! There is no point in having a beautifully indexed file full of useful articles if you keep all the information in those articles to yourself. When you find information that you judge to be scientifically sound and useful, you then need to decide whether and how you will use it to change your practice. Be proactive, use what you have found to initiate conversations with doctors and other health care professionals — it will show that you are on the ball. This is an ideal time to develop information management skills, as you will need to use and build on them throughout your career.

Mrs Styles is head of information services at the National Pharmaceutical Association