Nursing Research: Information Literacy for Nurses

Welcome to the Shoreline Library's Nursing Research guide!                            

A guide to researching and managing information for Nursing. In this Nursing Research guide we'll look at:

• Information Literacy: knowing how to find and evaluate information
• Introduce the genre of scientific literature, how to understand its different formats and purposes
• Identify useful resources and starting points for research, like databases accessed through the Shoreline CC Library and open access information on the internet
• Practice search skills and strategies for finding the most revelant information available in this resources and for identifying your topic and scope of inquiry for your research
• Be able to evaluate sources for their relevance to your inquiry, the reliability of their evidence and findings, and the biases involved scientific literature.
• Cite and your sources in APA Style and learn more about the purpose behind citation practices.

So What is Information Literacy and what does it look like in Nursing Research? Info Literacy gives you the skills to: 

• Identify misinformation and bias so that you can communicate with patients and coworkers about health misinformation and how to separate facts from rhetoric 
• be able to lead in your field with skills for locating the most up to date evidence based information in your field 
• be empowered by being able to control the role of your voice in the scholarly and scientific conversations happening around you
• make sure your evidence based practices are informed by trustworthy research and scientific findings

Campus SSLO (Shoreline Student Learning Outcomes)

"Information Literacy" is also one of five Shoreline Student Learning Outcomes for all students to build competence in throughout their program. The SSLOs describe "Information Literate" Students as those who can "locate, retrieve, and analyze or evaluate sources to fulfill an information need," or: 

demonstrate an awareness of how they gather, use, manage, synthesize and create information and data in an ethical manner and will have the information skills to do so effectively.
Locate:

• Recognize a gap in one’s knowledge
• Use the resources (tools/materials that provide data/information) available to fill that gap

Retrieve:

• Access and extract information from a source(s) to gain knowledge about a topic

Analyze:

• Use information to relate new knowledge to their information need and prior knowledge (information they already know)

Evaluate:

• Assess information for quality, accuracy, relevancy, bias, authority, and credibility
• Identify the value of and differences between resources in a variety of formats (e.g., multimedia, database, website, audio/visual, book).

In addition to how Information Literacy is described in Shorline's Information Literacy Learning Outcome, the American Library Association lists these competencies specific to Nursing research:

ALA (American Library Association) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Nursing

Standard One

The information literate nurse determines the nature and extent of the information needed.

Standard Two

The information literate nurse accesses needed information effectively and efficiently.

Standard Three

The information literate nurse critically evaluates the procured information and its sources, and as a result, decides whether or not to modify the initial query and/or seek additional sources and whether to develop a new research process.

Standard Four

The information literate nurse, individually or as a member of a group, uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.

Standard Five

The information literate nurse understands many of the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information and accesses and uses information ethically and legally.