How CKN is Utilising EBSCO Resources to Meet the Evolving Needs of Clinicians

For Queensland Health clinicians, the heart of their technology landscape is a clinical information service called the Clinical Knowledge Network (CKN). Through CKN, Clinicians have access to thousands of critical knowledge publications and information resources including diagnosis, treatment and medicines dosing tools.

Clinicians can’t afford to stand still when it comes to developing new skillsets and broadening their knowledge. Practice-changing research is regularly published, guidelines are routinely updated at an accelerated pace, and new cohorts of junior clinicians (schooled in the latest technology) enter hospitals every year. It makes sense that their needs, and their expectations, continue to change and grow as well. This means the technology supporting them must be both agile and innovative.

Queensland's Clinical Knowledge Network (CKN), which is maintained by EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO), keeps pace with the marketplace and the evolving needs of clinicians throughout the state. Since 2014, CKN and EBSCO’s goals have always been to stay current with the way clinicians work, anticipate new trends likely to impact clinicians, and maximise their ability to get the right information as quickly as possible.

With the end user always in mind, EBSCO employs a program of continuous improvement and innovation to optimise the user experience and quickly and effectively bring enhancements to life on CKN’s website, enabling clinicians to continue delivering the best possible patient outcomes. CKN highlights include:

A modern and intuitive website experience

EBSCO applies its user experience (UX) research methodology through user surveys and usability studies, by developing user personas, and by card sorting and tree testing. Users now have better visibility and access to resources and the ability to find clinical resources quickly, which enables them to spend more time with patients.

Helping users access the information they need

CKN serves as a central-library hub, directing users to information resources hosted outside of the CKN service. While high-use resources are front and centre in the website design, users also have full-text access to hundreds of journals with millions of individual articles. Users can navigate their way through this huge repository using EBSCO Discovery Service Health™, Publication Finder™ and Full Text Finder™. These tools provide an intuitive search experience, making all subscribed content discoverable, and a next-generation knowledge base, holdings management tool and full text link resolver. Recent enhancements to these tools include:

•  An “Available on CKN” limiter in EBSCO Discovery Service Health, saving researchers time by directing them to subscribed content
• The addition of a responsive search-box autocomplete feature, which displays search terms and publication titles. Clicking the term or title, as it appears in the list, will run the search, adding precision, as well as speed, for clinicians
• Greater visibility of highly relevant content within search results, highlighting the different types of content available to clinicians

Keeping CKN top of mind

Ensuring clinicians know about CKN and its wealth of resources is critical. Through user training and in-depth marketing tactics, Queensland Health has been able to spread the word about the solution to their clinicians through the following:      

• Developing a widely popular Clinical Champions Program to engage key personnel, creating subject matter experts through in-depth resource training, and provide a means for continuing professional development. CKN’s Clinical Champions advocate for the service with their peers, adopt greater use of clinical information resources throughout their cross functional teams, embed resources into their processes, and use them to fuel research projects and form a fundamental part of their day-to-day clinical practice.
• Implementing a communications strategy that reaches tens of thousands of clinicians throughout the state, through monthly newsletters, blog articles and social media channels.
• Creating a content strategy that engages CKN’s users with useful and meaningful content, such as medical research news and resource updates that makes them aware of the resources available, when there are significant updates to them, and exposes key website functionality, such as using search results.

The Manager of Clinical Knowledge Resources, Statistical Services Branch for Queensland Health, Richard Sayers says, "The current generation of clinicians, for whom web access via mobile devices and search tools are ubiquitous, typically rely on discovery capabilities for the information they need to deliver high quality health care. Their approach is often refreshingly direct: my time is limited, here is the search term – what information of relevance to my diagnosis/treatment of this patient does CKN have on the topic?  Queensland Health’s CKN service is effectively built around its discovery capability, and it works – very well."