Use of research in undergraduate nursing students' theses: A mixed methods study.

BACKGROUND: Health care personnel are expected to be familiar with evidence-based practice (EBP). Asking clinical questions, conducting systematic literature searches and conducting critical appraisal of research findings have been some of the barriers to EBP. To improve undergraduate nurses' research skills, a collaborative library-faculty teaching intervention was established in 2012. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to evaluate how the collaborative library-faculty teaching intervention affected the nursing students' research skills when writing their final theses. DESIGN AND SETTING: Both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis were used. The study focused on a final year undergraduate nurse training programme in Norway. PARTICIPANTS: 194 theses submitted between 2013 and 2015 were collected and assessed. The students were exposed to the intervention for respectively one, two and three years during this period. METHODS: Descriptive statistics were used to compare each year's output over the three-year period and to examine the frequency of the use of various databases, types of information and EBP-tools. Qualitative data was used to capture the students' reasoning behind their selection processes in their research. RESULTS: The research skills with regard to EBP have clearly improved over the three years. There was an increase in employing most EBP-tools and the justifications were connected to important EBP principles. The grades in the upper half of the grading scale increased from 66.7 to 82.1% over the period 2013 to 2015, and a correlation was found between grades and critical appraisal skills. CONCLUSIONS: The collaborative library-faculty teaching intervention employed has been successful in the promotion of nursing student research skills as far as the EBP principles are concerned. Writing a thesis in the undergraduate nursing programme is important to develop and practice these research skills.

Optimizing use of library technology.

In this bimonthly series, the author examines how nurse educators can use the Internet and Web-based computer technologies such as search, communication, collaborative writing tools; social networking and social bookmarking sites; virtual worlds; and Web-based teaching and learning programs. This article describes optimizing the use of library technology.

A comparison of research utilization among nurses working in Canadian civilian and United States Army healthcare settings.

Researchers and theorists working in the field of knowledge translation point to the importance of organizational context in influencing research utilization. The study purpose was to compare research utilization in two different healthcare contexts--Canadian civilian and United States (US) Army settings. Contrary to the investigators' expectations, research utilization scores were lower in US Army settings, after controlling for potential predictors. In-service attendance, library access, belief suspension, gender, and years of experience interacted significantly with the setting (military or civilian) for research utilization. Predictors of research utilization common to both settings were attitude and belief suspension. Predictors in the US Army setting were trust and years of experience, and in the Canadian civilian setting were in-service attendance, time (organizational), research champion, and library access. While context is of central importance, individual and organizational predictors interact with context in important although not well-understood ways, and should not be ignored.

Hospital nurses' use of knowledge-based information resources.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the information-seeking practices of nurses before and after access to a library's electronic collection of information resources. This is a pre/post intervention study of nurses at a rural community hospital. The hospital contracted with an academic health sciences library for access to a collection of online knowledge-based resources. Self-report surveys were used to obtain information about nurses' computer use and how they locate and access information to answer questions related to their patient care activities. In 2001, self-report surveys were sent to the hospital's 573 nurses during implementation of access to online resources with a post-implementation survey sent 1 year later. At the initiation of access to the library's electronic resources, nurses turned to colleagues and print textbooks or journals to satisfy their information needs. After 1 year of access, 20% of the nurses had begun to use the library's electronic resources. The study outcome suggests ready access to knowledge-based electronic information resources can lead to changes in behavior among some nurses.

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.

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

This article summarizes a research project carried out with the nursing staff of South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust. A 'community profile' looked at nurses' use of library and information services for patient care purposes and found that only a small portion of all categories of qualified staff were library users. 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. The results shown that personal and departmental collections were used quite frequently and the information was widely disseminated by the nurses to patients and their families, to colleagues and to students. The overall message from the survey was that the information obtained is valued highly and is used for various important purposes in health care delivery, such as educating patients and their families and revising treatment plans. However, nurses have difficulty in accessing libraries, which are judged to contain the most accurate, reliable and up-to-date information. The data from the community profile and questionnaire were further analysed using soft systems methodology, in order to identify problems in the traditional model of information delivery to nurses via conventional library and information service. These were then investigated further and a series of recommendations for action drawn up.

Nurses--their information needs and use of libraries: the views of some librarians.

An overview of the information needs of nurses is followed by a description of the findings of the Information Seeking Behaviour of Nurses Project. A brief comparison is made with the perceptions that librarians have of nurses' information-seeking activity followed by a more detailed discussion of the ways that librarians consider that nurses' use of libraries could be improved. It is concluded that library provision and use can be improved only by co-operation between nurses, students, educators, librarians and managers.