Today’s student is the registered nurse of tomorrow: the University of Queensland Library’s role in preparing nurses to apply evidence in clinical decision makingIn recent years senior management have driven the need to establish a culture of evidence based practice (EBP) in Queensland hospitals. EBP was first established in the medical arena. Now in 2005 there is a growing emphasis for nurses to use the evidence to support clinical decision making.Information literacy is seen as a critical prerequisite for evidence based practice. In the past, assumptions have been made about the base level of nurses’ information literacy skills. It has been identified that without at least moderate information literacy skills the ability to practice using the evidence based model is severely hampered. This paper discusses a study which examined the information literacy skills of students entering the Bachelor of Nursing, a newly offered program at the University of Queensland and those of graduate registered nurses entering employment at the Princess Alexandra Hospital located in Brisbane, Australia. A pre test and post test survey was used to ascertain base level of information literacy and evaluate the intervention, a librarian led workshop on searching and locating journal articles, use of the University of Queensland catalogue, Boolean operators and identifying relevant health databases. The results of the workshop indicated the students do not fully understand major information retrieval principles. The paper will report on the study process, report on related studies to date, the issues identified and the means to raise information literacy levels of nurses, in order to adequately prepare them for the EBP environment.
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