Information seeking and retrieval skills of nurses: Nurses readiness for evidence based practice in hospitals of a medical university in Iran.

BACKGROUND: With the explosion of medical information, and emergence of evidence-based practice (EBP) in healthcare system, searching, retrieving and selecting information for clinical decision-making are becoming required skills for nurses.

AIMS: The aims of this study were to examine the use of different medical information resources by nurses and their information searching and retrieving skills in the context of EBP.

METHOD: A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted in four teaching hospitals in Iran. Data were collected from 182 nurses using a questionnaire in 2014.

RESULTS: The nurses indicated that they use more human and printed resources than electronic resources to seek information (mean=2.83, SD=1.5; mean=2.77, SD=1.07; and mean=2.13, SD=0.88, respectively). To search online resources, the nurses use quick/basic search features more frequently (mean=2.45, SD=1.15) than other search features such as advanced search, index browsing and MeSH term searching. (1.74≤mean≤2.30, SD=1.01). At least 80% of the nurses were not aware of the purpose or function of search operators such as Boolean and proximity operators. In response to the question measuring skills of the nurses in developing an effective search statement by using Boolean operators, only 20% of them selected the more appropriate statement, using some synonyms of the concepts in a given subject.

CONCLUSION: The study showed that the information seeking and retrieval skills of the nurses were poor and there were clear deficits in the use of updated information resources. To compensate their EBP incompetency, nurses may resort to human resources. In order to use the latest up to date evidence independently, nurses need to improve their information literacy. To reach this goal, clinical librarians, health information specialists, nursing faculties, and clinical nurse educators and mentors can play key roles by providing educational programs. Providing access to online resources in clinical wards can also encourage nurses to learn and use these resources.