Host a Display

Rosie Nightingale, Library Assistant, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust

“How we collaborated with other departments in our organization to support Health Information Week 2025.”

Background

Like many organizations, our library team at the Royal United Hospital Bath (RUH) feels the pressure of doing more with less. Balancing our day-to-day duties and projects with Trust expectations and limitations – as a library assistant, this means prioritizing what can be done and being more innovative with how this can be achieved. This, together with capacity within our library team, influenced the impact we could realistically achieve for Health Information Week (HIW) in 2025.

Health Information Week

Part of our plan involved manning a public stand in the main foyer of our hospital to:

  • Raise the profile of how our library services can support staff to access high-quality information.
  • Highlight the health and wellbeing opportunities within the community via our local public libraries.
  • Spread some January Joy with free books that had been kindly donated by Bath Central Library.

This meant much of our focus went into creating a display and sourcing resources that would support this main event. We also wanted to cover some of the themes from HIW – however, as a small team, creating and promoting resources around these subjects was not a feasible option. During a planning session, the idea was born that a very simple and effective way to address this would be to invite other teams in our organization and offer to host a display on their behalf. With a focus on digital literacy, and mental health and wellbeing, we asked the following teams if they would like to provide resources and materials:

  • The Digital Literacy Trainer, who is responsible for improving the digital skills of RUH staff.
  • The Digital Inclusion Team, which supports patients to navigate digital applications and devices related to their health and care.
  • The Employee Assistance Programme and Wellbeing Team, which provide confidential support, signposting and interventions for RUH staff.

All teams agreed to participate and were able to provide resources for us to ‘host’. All that was required by us was to ensure that we had appropriate HIW branding to promote the displays, prompt arrival of materials and a library assistant to assemble everything onto the boards.

Images of our HIW boards in the Library, our stand in the hospital foyer and the promotional timetable we circulated on our online, internal communication site Workplace.
Conclusion

‘Host a Display’ is now a significant initiative within our display planning and library initiatives. It benefits all involved as we can:

  • Build relationships with other teams within our organization and draw on their expertise.
  • Reduce our environmental and printing impact by re-using materials that already exist.
  • Promote the services of our Library and the teams we are hosting.
  • Raise the profile and existence of the Library.
  • Improve the workload of the library assistants.

For our team, it is an achievable way of making an impact without having to spend too much time re-creating resources and materials. We are already looking at other potential awareness days and teams that we can ‘host’ later this year.