NHS Wales e-Library has extended their national subscription to BMJ Best Practice to include the Comorbidities Manager for all NHS Wales health and care professionals.
In the UK alone, one in three patients admitted to hospital as an emergency have five or more conditions. This poses a significant challenge for healthcare professionals. Clinical guidelines often focus on single conditions, but failure to treat the whole patient can lead to worse clinical outcomes, and longer lengths of stay. The global COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the problem with over 60% of patients admitted to intensive care units having comorbidities¹.
The Comorbidities Manager with BMJ Best Practice supports the management of the whole patient by including guidance on the treatment of a patient’s acute condition alongside their pre-existing comorbidities.
NHS Wales e-Library provides access to BMJ Best Practice as a practical clinical support tool to help NHS Wales health and care professionals to meet the changing and more complex needs of patients, and maximise NHS Wales resources, together resulting in better care and improving outcomes for patients.
Geraint Walker, Clinical Informaticist Critical Care, Digital Health and Care Wales said:
“As a clinical decision support tool, the BMJ Comorbidities Manager is quite easy to add comorbidities and see their effect on any treatment plan. It also provides clear guidance of additional considerations in one singular view for the clinician.”
Louise Crowe, Director of Knowledge, BMJ, said:
“We are delighted that NHS Wales e-Library has extended their BMJ Best Practice subscription to include the Comorbidities Manager for all NHS Wales health and care professionals. With 97% of users in a recent study saying that the Comorbidities Manager improved their practice, I am confident that it will deliver enormous value.
At BMJ, everything we do is to help support health professionals, and the Comorbidities Manager represents a step-change in how we do that.”
All authorised users of the NHS Wales e-Library can use BMJ Best Practice. Log in at bestpractice.bmj.com. Access is instant from the NHS Wales network or through an NHS Wales OpenAthens account.
Help and support: Contact your local Library, Information or Knowledge Service or BMJ support: support.bmj.com. To learn how to create a free NHS Wales OpenAthens account go to https://elh.nhs.wales/sign-in/
Notes to Editors:
BMJ Best Practice takes you quickly and accurately to the latest evidence-based information, whenever and wherever you need it.
The step-by-step guidance on diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prevention is updated daily using robust evidence-based methodology and expert opinion.
BMJ Best Practice provides fast access to:
- Comprehensive condition topics spanning 32 specialties
- Access anywhere, with online and offline access via the BMJ Best Practice app
- Step-by-step guidance via unique treatment algorithm tables
- Comorbidities Manager prompts healthcare professionals to consider a patient’s comorbidities when accessing treatment information on an acute topic
- A Local Guidance tool enabling healthcare organisations to easily add links to local clinical information
- More than 250 medical calculators
- Over 500 patient leaflets
- Procedural videos covering essential clinical techniques
- Important Updates and Cochrane Clinical Answers highlighted within each topic
- Automatic CME/CPD tracking
- Ability to integrate with Electronic Health Record systems to give easy access to the latest clinical information within the patient workflow
The clinical support decision tool provides doctors, nurses, paramedics and other healthcare professionals with guidance on the most common medical conditions to improve knowledge and support the delivery of the very best care to patients. It supports teams to treat the whole patient.
About BMJ
BMJ is a healthcare knowledge provider with a vision of helping to create a healthier world. Most famous for publishing one of the world’s top five general medical journals, The BMJ journal, we share knowledge and expertise to improve experiences and outcomes worldwide. See the difference we are making in our latest impact report: https://www.bmj.com/company/impact-report/
About NHS Wales e-Library:
The NHS Wales e-Library connects users to NHS Wales’ largest source of health and social care evidence and digital information. Our vision is to provide a high-quality service to promote evidence-based practice and empower users to improve and innovate in health and social care. Discover high quality e-Journals, e-Books, databases, evidence summaries, medicines information, guidelines, e-Learning and more: https://elh.nhs.wales/
¹ Espinosa OA, Zanetti ADS, Antunes EF, Longhi FG, Matos TA, Battaglini PF. Prevalence of comorbidities in patients and mortality cases affected by SARS-CoV2: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo. 2020;62:e43. Published 2020 Jun 22. doi:10.1590/S1678- 9946202062043. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7310609/