Library tools at the nurses' station: exploring information-seeking behaviors and needs of nurses in a war veterans nursing home

Objectives:Analyze the information-seeking practices and identify the information and education needs of nurses in a war veterans nursing home. Develop an online toolkit for use at the nurses'' stations to meet nurses'' health information needs.Methods:Investigators employed mixed methods to determine the health information needs of the participating nurses at the skilled nursing facility using an online questionnaire and in-person observations. Resulting data was compared to determine how nurses'' self-reported data corresponded with investigator observations.Results:Twenty-seven out of a total of thirty-five nurses responded to the online questionnaire. The study principal investigator also observed a total of twelve nurses working across all shifts. The online questionnaire asked nurses to identify when they need health information for an acute clinical scenario. Nurses self-reported feeling most confident in assessing falls and pain, followed by medication adherence and skin integrity. Issues most frequently encountered during observation of nurses were falls, interventions surrounding cognitive ability or dementia, and use of antibiotics. Nurses reported and were observed to consult colleagues most frequently, followed by drug handbooks and relying on nursing experience.Conclusion:Nurses in skilled nursing facilities will benefit from ready online access to current drug handbooks as well as information resources surrounding commonly encountered clinical issues and stated needs. An outcome of this project is an online toolkit site using a LibGuide created specifically for this purpose. Researchers purchased laptop computers that were installed at each of the nurses'' stations to provide ready access to the toolkit site.     

Librarians collaborating with nurses

Nurses have the potential to be one of the largest groups of users a medical library can serve. In recognition of this fact, librarians at St. John's Health System embarked on a journey to collaborate with nurses and increase this group's use of the medical library. In 2004, a nursing outreach plan was developed by librarians, with input from non-physician health care employees. The nursing outreach plan will be reviewed along with the barriers and successes encountered during implementation of the plan. Innovative strategies for reaching nursing personnel were accomplished by partnering with nurses to reach nurses.     

基层青年护理人员网络医学信息利用行为特点的调查分析

为了解基层青年护理人员网络医学信息利用行为的基本状况,选取广东部分基层青年护理人员,对其医学信息利用的基础条件、主动性、目的、使用频率、满意度和障碍因素等进行调查,以便能够有针对性地对基层护理人员开展信息素养教育,提高基层医院护理水平。     

临床护士电子文献数据库利用情况调查及分析

采用问卷形式,调查了济南、青岛、济宁市三甲医院和二甲医院240名临床护士对电子文献数据库的利用情况,揭示了新一轮医院等级评审形势下临床护士知晓和利用电子文献数据库的新特征,为医院图书馆开展学科馆员服务、进一步做好电子文献服务工作提供借鉴。     

Promoting library services to qualified nurses:towards a market-led approach

This article summarizes a research projectcarried out with the nursing staff of South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust. A ‘communityprofile’ looked at nurses’ use of library and information services for patient carepurposes and found that only a small proportion of all categories of qualified staff were libraryusers. A postal questionnaire was used to investigate why nurses sought information,what they used it for, where they obtained it from and how valuable they perceived it to be. Theresults show that personal and departmental collections were used quite frequently and theinformation was widely disseminated by the nurses to patients and their families, to colleagues andto students. The overall message from the survey was that the information obtained is valuedhighly and is used for various important purposes in health care delivery, such as educatingpatients and their families and revising treatment plans. However, nurses have difficulty inaccessing libraries, which are judged to contain the most accurate, reliable and up-to-dateinformation. The data from the community profile and questionnaire were furtheranalysed using soft systems methodology, in order to identify problems in the traditional model ofinformation delivery to nurses via a conventional library and information service. These were theninvestigated further and a series of recommendations for action drawn up.     

Information-seeking behavior of nursing students and clinical nurses: implications for health sciences librarians.

OBJECTIVES: This research was conducted to provide new insights on clinical nurses' and nursing students' current use of health resources and libraries and deterrents to their retrieval of electronic clinical information, exploring implications from these findings for health sciences librarians. METHODS: Questionnaires, interviews, and observations were used to collect data from twenty-five nursing students and twenty-five clinical nurses. RESULTS: Nursing students and clinical nurses were most likely to rely on colleagues and books for medical information, while other resources they frequently cited included personal digital assistants, electronic journals and books, and drug representatives. Significantly more nursing students than clinical nurses used online databases, including CINAHL and PubMed, to locate health information, and nursing students were more likely than clinical nurses to report performing a database search at least one to five times a week. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Nursing students made more use of all available resources and were better trained than clinical nurses, but both groups lacked database-searching skills. Participants were eager for more patient care information, more database training, and better computer skills; therefore, health sciences librarians have the opportunity to meet the nurses' information needs and improve nurses' clinical information-seeking behavior.     

An Information Needs Assessment of School Nurses in a Metropolitan County

ABSTRACT

School nurses are an integral though often underserved population within the health care and education professions. To develop an effective outreach program for this group, an academic health sciences library conducted an information needs assessment of public school nurses in Tulsa County, Oklahoma. An online survey collected perceptions regarding information needs and behaviors, and a focus group session further explored the survey results. The assessment revealed that school nurses frequently require specific types of information to perform their responsibilities and face challenges accessing and integrating research into their daily practice. This article presents the implications and results of this assessment.     

Information for trained nurses in remote areas: do electronically networked resources provide an answer?

This paper reports on a research project which examined the potential ofthe Internet, and other networked information resources, to improve access to information fortrained nurses working in remote areas. This paper provides a review of current literature in thefield. It describes the research carried out, presents a summary of the research findings anddiscusses the implications of these findings. The paper concludes that the Internet and networkedresources do have considerable potential to improve access to information for nurses working inremote and rural areas. However, information skills, along with professional guidance, are alsorequired.     

Health answer quality evaluation by librarians,nurses, and users in social Q&A

Health information consumers and patients increasingly take an active role in seeking health information online and in sharing their health problems and concerns in online support groups and social media venues. However, they may risk being influenced by unreliable and misleading information in such environments, as no intermediaries monitor the quality of this information. This study focuses on evaluating the quality of health information exchanged in one of the social media venues, by investigating how librarians, nurses, and users assessed the quality of health answers in Yahoo! Answers, a social question-and-answering (Q&A) service. Through statistical analysis differences among the three participant groups, how the background characteristics influenced their assessments, and the relationships between characteristics of the content of answers and quality evaluation criteria were each considered in detail. Librarians and nurses shared similar ratings of answer quality, but had differences in their level of medical knowledge and the types of services they offer, resulting in minor differences across criteria. Users perceived the quality of health answers in social Q&A to be higher than librarians and nurses for almost all criteria. Depending on the sources of information presented in health answers, librarians, nurses, and users gave different quality assessments. Implications exist for research into and practice of evaluating the quality of health information, which need to address both search and domain expertise along with the sharing of socioemotional values preferred by users.     

Information Needs Assessment for K-12 School Nurses in Rural Eastern Washington State

School nurses are an often-overlooked population of health care professionals who have great importance in rural communities where access to health care is limited. In order to better serve school nurses in rural eastern Washington, an assessment was conducted to determine their information needs, behaviors, and perceptions. Results indicated this population of school nurses searches for multiple types of health information on a daily basis and navigates obstacles to information access using a variety of resources. While largely confident in their searching ability, they are open to learning more about how to find reliable health information to support their daily responsibilities. These results will guide the development of a workshop for school nurses about using reliable health information resources to improve health care in their rural communities.     

Evaluation of a hospital medical library class for NICU nurses

A library class was designed and offered to new nurses from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the Children's Hospital of Michigan between 2003 and 2005. The class was intended to increase their knowledge of quality health information resources and to assist them with their smooth transition to a new health care organization. The goal of the library training class was to develop the nurses' awareness and knowledge of the library services and online resources on the organization Intranet and to improve their skills in finding reliable information related to patient care, patient parent education, and research. An evaluation study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of the library class. Although the findings demonstrated strengths of the library class, they also revealed some areas for improvement. The data gathered resulted in a number of recommendations regarding library instruction design and evaluation.     

医院护理专业人员信息素养调查分析

目的：了解医院护理专业人员的信息素养现状,为开展护士信息素养继续教育提供参考依据,从而为提升护理技能,开展护理科研奠定基础。方法：通过对医院护理人员论文发表情况、利用图书馆文献资源现状、问卷调查等多种形式进行调查。结果：与医生群体相比,护理人员在科研项目开展、发表论文数量、利用图书馆资源、信息知识等方面均处在弱势地位。结论：多数护理人员在信息意识、信息能力等方面存在一定的缺陷,医院图书馆可以通过开展馆藏资源介绍、数据库应用培训等多种形式帮助护理人员提高信息素养,以整体提高我院护理科研水平,促进护理事业的发展。     

Internet‐based information‐seeking behaviour amongst doctors and nurses: a short review of the literature

Background: Reviews of how doctors and nurses search for online information are relatively rare, particularly where research examines how they decide whether to use Internet‐based resources. Original research into their online searching behaviour is also rare, particularly in real world clinical settings. as is original research into their online searching behaviour. This review collates some of the existing evidence, from 1995 to 2009. Objectives: To establish whether there are any significant differences in the ways and reasons why doctors and nurses seek out online information; to establish how nurses and doctors locate information online; to establish whether any conclusions can be drawn from the existing evidence that might assist health and medical libraries in supporting users. Methods: An initial scoping literature search was carried out on PubMed and CINAHL to identify existing reviews of the subject area and relevant original research between 1995 and 2009. Following refinement, further searches were carried out on Embase (Ovid), LISA and LISTA. Following the initial scoping search, two journals were identified as particularly relevant for further table of contents searching. Articles were exclused where the main focus was on patients searching for information or where the focus was the evaluation of online‐based educational software or tutorials. Articles were included if they were review or meta‐analysis articles, where they reported original research, and where the primary focus of the online search was for participants’ ongoing Continuing Professional Development (CPD). The relevant articles are outlined, with details of numbers of participants, response rates, and the user groups. Results: There appear to be no significant differences between the reasons why doctors and nurses seek online Internet‐based evidence, or the ways in which they locate that evidence. Reasons for searching for information online are broadly the same: primarily patient care and CPD (Continuing Professional Development). The perceived barriers to accessing online information are the same in both groups. There is a lack of awareness of the library as a potential online information enabler. Conclusions: Libraries need to examine their policy and practice to ensure that they facilitate access to online evidence‐based information, particularly where users are geographically remote or based in the community rather than in a hospital setting. Librarians also need to take into account the fact that medical professionals on duty may not be able to take advantage of the academic model of online information research. Further research is recommended into the difference between the idealised academic model of searching and real world practicalities; and how other user groups search, for example patients.     

网络环境下医院图书馆读者群的信息需求与服务对策

采用问卷调查方式对南通大学附属第三人民医院图书馆读者的信息需求进行了调查,分析了医生、护士、医技和行政管理人员等群体对信息需求的异同性,研究了医院图书馆满足不同读者群个性化、多样化和深层次信息需求的对策。     

Addressing Library Anxiety (LA) in student nurses: a study in an NHS Foundation Trust Hospital library and information service

Library anxiety is a concept which has been recognised in academic library circles since the early 1990s. It can result in students actively avoiding the library for the duration of their studies. Madeleine Still is Trust Librarian at North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and while studying for an MSc, recognised that some student nurses were exhibiting signs of library anxiety. She decided to make it the focus of her MSc dissertation, and this article discusses her research project as well as highlighting the measures she has taken to address the issues she uncovered. Madeleine graduated in July 2013 with an MSc in Information & Library Studies from Robert Gordon University. AM     

Designing the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Nursing

This column documents the rationale for creating information literacy competency standards for nursing based on the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” and the three documents from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) on essential skills for nurses in baccalaureate, masters, and doctoral level education and practice. It chronicles the process of the task force which is designing the discipline specific skills and predicts the value of their use, once they are published.     

From vision to reality—Managing changein the provision of library and information services to nurses,midwives, health visitors and PAMs:a case study of the North Thames experience with the Inner London Consortium

One ofthe North Thames’ pioneering consortia, the Inner London Consortium (ILC) is a complexbody which includes NHS Trusts with teaching hospital university connections, community-basedTrusts and general hospital acute Trusts. Within the consortium there are 12000 trained nurses,midwives, health visitors and other professional staff working in the professions allied to medicine(PAMs), all of whom require access to and provision of appropriate library information services. In 1994, taking into account experiences elsewhere in the Region and nationally, itbecame clear that library issues were complex and would become acute with the move of nursinglibraries from ILC Trust sites over a very short timescale. A report on the issues commissioned bythe Consortium recommended that a library project, which built on existing NHS Trust PGMDEfunded library resources and moved these to a multidisciplinary base to serve the consortiummembership, be implemented. The objective of providing access to library informationservices for nurses and PAMs was achieved. Successes that emerged from the implementationincluded: The registration in Trust libraries of almost 12000 new members within theinitial 6-month monitoring period. The development of service level agreements andstandards for the delivery of services to these new user groups. This paper describes theprocesses behind these significant and complex changes.     

Integrating Information Literacy into an Online Undergraduate Nursing Informatics Course: The Librarian's Role in the Design and Teaching of the Course

ABSTRACT

Integration of information literacy as a core component into a new online undergraduate nursing course proved to be a learning experience in course design and teaching. This article describes the framework for the course design that combined cultural competency, informatics, and information literacy and was grounded in informatics competencies for nurses at the beginning level, an informatics textbook, and the Neurnan Systems Model. The librarian's role in this process and the information literacy unit's content and written assignment are detailed, and challenges in the collaboration are also addressed.