Information Need And Seeking Behaviour Of Practicing Nurses In Nigeria; The Case Of Our Lady Of Lourdes Hospital Ihiala

Abstract This research adopted a survey design which sought information from respondents on the Information needs and seeking behaviour of practising nurses in Nigeria: the case of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Ihiala. The population comprised fifty-two (52) practising nurses in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Ihiala. There was no sampling because the whole population was studied since it is small and manageable. The nominal role of Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital was used to derive the population of the study. A questionnaire entitled “Information Seeking Behaviour of Nurses Questionnaire (ISBNQ)” was developed by the researcher, validated by experts and used for data collection. Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Co-efficient was used to obtain a reliability coefficient of 0.84. Data were collected and analysed using mean scores. The findings revealed that practising nurses in the Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Ihiala need information on education and training, information to improve knowledge in clinical areas, care and management of patient, HIV/AIDS, immunization among others, nurses obtain the needed information mainly through their working colleagues, working colleagues such as nurses and doctors were accepted as the most adequate information source, lack of current materials on nursing and lack of information literacy were the most ranking problems of information needs of nurses. Based on the findings, recommendations include among others that the management of the hospital should provide training, workshops and other current information sources to managers, clinical nurse specialists and doctors since nurses seek information from them