The information need and use of community health nurses : a study of the information need and use in relation to task complexity

This study is an attempt to examine the information needs and use in everyday tasks inthe work environment of community health nurses. The purpose of this paper is double toexamine the information need and use of the community health nurses and to test and validatea method and a theory for the studying of information need and use in workers everydaytasks adapted from Byström and Järvelin (1995). Most of the data were collected throughdiaries kept by the informants in close relationship to the problem situations and were analysedqualitatively. Furthermore a literature survey was made in nursing infomatics and informationscience and it showed that there is no absolute common ground between the disciplinesin the way they use the information concept.The theory and method were validated in a broad outline and were very useful in the study ofcommunity health nurses' information needs and use. The study also shows that the contextof community health nurses plays an important role in the nurses information behaviour