CIAP Help

A CIAP user name and password is available to nurses, midwives, doctors, allied health, community health, ancillary and library staff working in the NSW public health system. To obtain a CIAP user name and password, contact your local/Area CIAP representative.

The CIAP passwords are changed every two years. This is regarded as good practice and will reduce the incidence of unauthorised usage. Our licensing agreement states that CIAP resources are only available to staff working in the NSW public health system.

Contact your local/Area CIAP representative. The CIAP representative is responsible for the security of user names and passwords at their respective facilities.

CIAP is available to all staff employed within the NSW public health system. If you are a health profession student on clinical placement in any public health facility within NSW, you are authorised to access CIAP during that placement only. You can access CIAP via ward computers or the hospital or Area library while at work. Contact a local/Area CIAP representative at the facility you are undertaking your placement in.

If you are a health profession student and you are also employed by the NSW public health system (e.g. as an Assistant in Nursing), you are entitled to CIAP access.

If you are unsure if you are an authorised CIAP student user, please contact your local/Area CIAP representative.

For further details, contact the CIAP help desk on 1800 824 279.

*** Note that CIAP is not licensed for general undergraduate student access

The licences are reviewed and increased, if necessary.

Most publishers give archival rights, although some only give access to the year of the journal subscription.

Yes, the majority of the resources are available through the intranet. The degree of access to local content, databases, and internet resources may be restricted by the security configuration at your organisation. Areas are advised of internet sites that are approved by the CIAP Management Committee and how to enable access to these for clinicians who do not have full internet access.

The preference for hosting the databases is to outsource to the vendor (HCN). Databases are updated weekly, and sometimes, daily. This is the case for the large databases such as Medline, which has 12 million citations, including links to our current complement of full-text journals. HCN updates the databases in one location only and therefore all clinicians in NSW Health have access to the same information at the same time. Hosting the databases locally would incur additional licence costs as well as create the following issues:

• currency of the information would not be synchronised with the rest of the State, as updates would be less frequent, i.e. not daily/weekly but monthly
• there would be loss of flexibility with online-only products
• the number of licences purchased by the state would need to be increased to accommodate local hosting and we would lose the advantage of sharing a large pool of licences
• there would be additional hardware/software and maintenance costs.

The Bolam principle (1957) protected doctors against negligence claims if other colleagues would have acted in the same manner. The Bolam principle was overturned in an Australian court in 1995 and according to Coiera (1997)* it is likely that this will happen in other countries where it applies. It seems that this has already happened in Israel!

In 1998, an Israeli court issued a verdict that a doctor, who does not update his medical knowledge using professional literature, is liable for malpractice. It seems that a certain eminent brain surgeon established that his client was suffering from a brain tumour, while she was really suffering from a very rare kind of multiple sclerosis. The professor was not aware that such a disease even existed!

There is no doubt that patients are better informed these days as they have access to numerous information sources via the Internet (free Medline as well as non-accredited sources). A well-informed patient population and overworked clinicians with poor access to the literature is a recipe for increasing litigation. This should be a good incentive to ensure that we do provide the most recent literature at the most convenient location for clinicians in all care settings.
* Coeira, E. (1997) Guide To Medical Informatics, The Internet and Telemedicine, Chapman & Hall Medical.

Access to CIAP information is valued as a part of the core business of health just like an HR system, a finance system or a Patient Administration System. Access to clinical knowledge bases at the point of care has not always been viewed in this way. Each Area Health Service has its own policy about connecting to the Internet. For example, some Areas use education funds and do not charge their users, while others have a policy of user pays. Costs vary depending on which Area Health Service you work for from $0 to $360 per user per annum. You will need to approach your CIAP representative or IT section to find out the Area's policy.