A Day in the Life: Michael Cook, Knowledge & Evidence Specialist 

As a big fan of the What Did You Do Yesterday? podcast, I was pleased to be asked to contribute to this feature. 

Background 

I work as a Knowledge & Evidence Specialist (KES) for the UKHSA Knowledge & Library Service, supporting internal users from our internal Science Directorate and key stakeholders in OHID (Office for Health Improvement & Disparities). I work from home full-time, and yesterday was our new cat Wynnie’s first full day in the house. 

Early Morning 

I logged on a bit earlier than usual as I was doing the school run, which I don’t normally do but Laura had a must-attend meeting, so I wanted to get a bit done early doors.  

I try to start and end each day consistently. The first half hour is for preparation: checking emails, logging into our internal request system (RT), planning the day, and updating my bullet journal. I’ve realised I can get easily distracted, so I lay out my day clearly and try to be less available during core hours. It helps me stay focused, especially when I’m working deeply on something. 

8 to 9am

Parenting / School run.

Morning: Systematic Review Support 

I’m currently working on a systematic review on avoidable hospital admissions for newborns (aged 30 days or under). The search strategy has been agreed with the project team, tested, and peer-reviewed using our mini-PRESS process. It ran successfully on OVID Medline and captured everything we needed, so my goal this week is to translate it to other databases. 

However, after re-running it on OVID Embase yesterday, we got four times as many results compared to Medline, so some digging is needed! I’d hoped to get started straight away, but OVID was down. After checking with colleagues, it turned out to be just me. One of those bugs that mysteriously fixes itself after a restart and a swear. 

10am: KES Team Meeting 

Our KES Team, one of five within the wider service, has a weekly virtual check-in every Tuesday. There are seven of us, based across the country, supporting different user groups, so it’s a great way to stay connected. 

We usually share what we’re working on in the chat, then each offer a success and a challenge, because 30 minutes of listing tasks gets dull fast. Mine were the systematic review search translation (challenge!) and the new cat (success!). These meetings are a good way to informally support each other and spot wider issues, like Embase returning more results than Medline, so we can collectively troubleshoot if needed. 

11am: Information Science Group 

This whole-team meeting is where we share internal or sector-relevant updates and CPD feedback. I think of it as our technical whole team meeting. 

In this session, our Systems Librarian discussed upgrades to RT, we reviewed our new ‘urgent search’ procedure (our team loves a SOP), and we shared an EndNote output style to match .gov.uk formatting. Dry, but useful. 

Cat Update

Wynnie spent most of the morning nearby, but has done plenty of exploring, too.

Break 

I usually try to get some exercise in, but it was raining heavily…so I lay on the bed with the cat and played Balatro on my phone. Suddenly it was 1pm. 

Afternoon: Systematic Review Support (again)

No more meetings, thankfully! I got back to the avoidable admissions review. After a quick Teams chat with a colleague peer-reviewing the search, we agreed it needed reworking. That means redoing all the peer review steps, but I sent off the revised search for peer review and didn’t think about it for the rest of the day. 

2pm: NSIP Project Work 

I’m part of a cross-organisational project on Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), but I can’t attend the latest meeting tomorrow, so I wrote an update on the evidence briefing I’m producing. After that, I did some exercises prescribed by my Sports Therapist, which I really should have done at lunchtime.

3.15pm

School run.

4pm: Quick Jobs 

I opened Outlook and did a round of responding and deleting. We’re looking at ways to get our Value & Impact work included as a session at next year’s UKHSA Conference, after a rejection for the 2025 Conference. We’ve decided to make it more outcomes-focused, so we’ll need to involve some non-library colleagues and chatted about possible people to invite.  

I also followed up on an ongoing piece of work, responded to a training request for Rayyan, and accepted a meeting invite about a potential future search. I logged off around 5pm. 

Cat Update

Already settled in, and slept most of the afternoon on the end of the bed near my desk.

Michael Cook

Knowledge & Evidence Specialist 

UKHSA Knowledge & Library Service