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February WED.4. Aslib Engineering Group. One‐day Conference. Newcastle. Aslib Transport Group/Motor Industries Information Group joint meeting. Plans for a new system of business statistics. Speaker: M. C. Fessey (Business Statistics Office). University of Aston. 2.30 p.m.

It is flattering that a statistician should be asked to address a gathering of librarians. In Five Orange Pips Sherlock Holmes remarks that a man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture he is likely to use and the rest he can put away in the lumber room of his library where he can get it if he wants it. I have no view about Conan Doyle's definition of a library as a lumber room, but certainly I find the little brain attics of librarians well stocked with one of the two branches of epistemology, as Dr Johnson defined them: ‘Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information about it’. I pay tribute to the ability of librarians to find information about statistics, despite what must occasionally seem to them the perverse ingenuity with which statisticians make the task difficult. It is easy enough to find United Kingdom statistics. There are an infinity of them—in the Digests of Statistics, of Financial Statistics, of Regional Statistics, and so on. The trouble is that those who inquire of you usually want a particular statistic—although the phrase ‘any figures will do’ is one which is not unfamiliar to me. To find in the forest of United Kingdom figures the particular sapling which a researcher is seeking is sometimes far from easy. My experience is that the librarians know their way about the lumber at least as well as we statisticians do.

March WED.4. One‐Day Conference on In‐Training of Library and Information Staff. Imperial College, London.

THE London & Home Counties Branch of the Library Association is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, and fortuitously the jubilee falls on the same day of the week as the branch's foundation—Tuesday, May 1. The branch is holding a buffet reception at Buckingham Palace Road Library that evening, to which all present and former members are cordially invited and which will be attended by LA President K C Harrison, himself a former chairman of the branch.

Experienced fire ground commanders are known to make decisions in time-pressured and dynamic environments. The purpose of this paper is to report some of the tacit knowledge and skills expert firefighters use in performing complex fire ground tasks.

This study utilized a structured knowledge elicitation tool, known as the critical decision method (CDM), to elicit expert knowledge. Totally, 17 experienced firefighters were interviewed in-depth using a semi-structured CDM interview protocol. The CDM protocol was analysed using the emergent themes analysis approach.

Findings from the CDM protocol reveal both the salient cues sought, which the authors termed critical cue inventory (CCI), and the goals pursued by the fire ground commanders at each decision point. The CCI is categorized into five classes based on the type of information each cue generates to the incident commanders.

Since the CDM is a useful tool for identifying training needs, this study discussed the practical implications for transferring experts’ knowledge to novice firefighters.

Although many authors recognize that experts perform exceptionally well in their domains of practice, the difficulty still lies in getting a structured method for unmasking experts’ tacit knowledge. This paper is therefore relevant as it presents useful findings following a naturalistic knowledge elicitation study that was conducted across different fire stations in the UK and Nigeria.

In our last ‘Notes and News’ we made an unfortunate mistake. In writing on the poetry section of the School Library Association's book list Fiction, Verse and Legend we referred to the Bodley Head series of poetry for the young as ‘now regrettably out of print’. Before making this categorical statement we had referred to the Bodley Head's current catalogue ‘with complete back‐list’, and had failed to find any reference to the series, but we had also failed to notice the comparatively insignificant sentence on page ii of the cover: ‘Children's books are listed in a separate catalogue.’

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that nurse led discharge (NLD) could improve the efficiency of simple discharges from a short stay surgical ward without compromising patient safety.

A protocol for NLD was designed and implemented. Introduction of the protocol was audited and re-audited prospectively.

Introduction of the nurse led discharge protocol significantly reduced the rate of delayed discharge (p>0.001). The protocol successfully identified all patients for whom a NLD would be inappropriate and no patients discharged by the nursing team were re-admitted.

No formal measure of staff and patient satisfaction with the new protocol was performed.

The nursing team are now able to more effectively manage patient flow through the short stay surgical ward. Mismatch between demand for beds and capacity has reduced.

Patient experience has been improved by the release of time to care for our nurses and the elimination of unnecessary delay in discharge.

Formal protocol driven NLD can be a safe way of improving efficiency in patient flow. This pattern of discharge could be applied in many hospital systems.

The OSCE is regarded as the gold standard of competence assessment in many healthcare programs, however, there are numerous internal and external sources of variation contributing to checklist marks. There is concern amongst organisers that candidates may be unfairly disadvantaged if they follow an “excellent” preceding candidate. This study assessed if average checklist scores differed depending on who a candidate follows accounted for different sources of variation.

This study examined assessment data from final year MBChB OSCEs at the University of Aberdeen and categorised candidates into three levels dependent on examiner awarded global scores of preceding candidates for each station. Data were modelled using a linear mixed model incorporating fixed and random effects.

A total of 349 candidates sat the OSCEs. The predicted mean (95% CI) score for students following an “excellent” candidate was 21.6 (20.6, 22.6), followed “others” was 21.5 (20.5, 22.4) and followed an “unsatisfactory” student was 22.2 (21.1, 23.3). When accounted for individual, examiner and station levels variabilities, students following an “excellent” candidate did not have different mean scores compared to those who followed “other” (p = 0.829) or “unsatisfactory” candidates (p = 0.162), however, students who followed an “unsatisfactory” student scored slightly higher on average compared to those who followed “other” (p = 0.038).

There was weak evidence that candidate's checklist variations could be attributed to who they followed, particularly those following unsatisfactory students; the difference in predicted mean scores may be of little practical relevance. Further studies with multiple centres may be warranted assuring perceived fairness of the OSCE to candidates and educators.