The experience of information literacy in nursing practice

Information Literacy (IL) plays a key role in nursing, especially in the context of evidence-based practice (EBP), the initiative within health and social care in which clinical practice is informed by research evidence. However there is currently little evidence to show how being information literate is actually experienced by nurses and therefore whether information literacy educational interventions are promoting appropriate knowledge and skills. A research project has been designed to investigate how nurses experience information literacy using phenomenography, an interview-based methodology which allows experiences to be categorised and put into a descriptive structure for use in the development of educational interventions. Insights from the findings will be used to map out the parameters of information literacy and to put forward a theoretical model of a module to successfully develop it. This paper discusses the context of the research and the findings from a pilot study