Essay 2: Information Literacy's Role in Nursing Practice

This essay, titled "Information Literacy in Nursing," delves into the critical role of information literacy in the field of nursing, particularly in the context of evidence-based practice (EBP). It highlights how information literacy enables nurses to effectively find, evaluate, and apply relevant information for informed decision-making. The essay emphasizes the significance of EBP in healthcare and the need for nurses to possess strong information literacy skills. It then compares and contrasts the use of libraries and Google Scholar as resources for information retrieval, discussing their respective strengths and weaknesses. The essay concludes by reinforcing the importance of information literacy for nurses to gather relevant data from reliable sources, ultimately improving their practice and patient outcomes. The document is contributed by a student to be published on the website Desklib, a platform which provides all the necessary AI based study tools for students.

Running Head: ESSAY 0
Academic Essay
Information Literacy in Nursing
Student Details:
10/30/2018

Essay 1
Information Literacy in Nursing
Introduction
Information literacy is an ability set which help individuals to identify when
relevant information is needed and how this needed info can be located, evaluated, and used
effectively. Information literacy in nursing focuses on the effective method of finding,
studying, analysing and taking right decisions based on that info which is the base of
evidence-based practice (referred as EBP) in nursing. Information Literacy (referred as IL) is
having great significance in nursing, specifically for EBP. EBP is the creative initiative taken
in health and social care area for clinical practice. Further, EBP requires a core understanding
about how relevant information is found, organized and applied, hence proficiency in
information literacy in nursing is an indispensable foundation, and an assured approach to
lifelong learning.
Nursing as well as other health and social care disciplines requires introducing the concept of
IL as it is pre-required for EBP. IL is important because it provides the skills for searching,
evaluating and integrating research evidences into all professional decision-making
processes. All persons must be aware about when info search is needed and they must have
capable to find, analyse, evaluate, and utilize effectively that needed information or data and
hence information literacy helps nurses to find professional learning information search. For
nursing practitioners, IL is architecture of info and the scholarly method; being the capability
to direct among a kind of print as well as electronic tools to effectively access, find, and
judgmentally evaluate appropriate resources (Younger, 2010). IL synthesizes collected
information into a body of knowledge; interconnect research results effectively and clearly.
Moreover, using IL in nursing will appreciate the social issues as well as ethical problems

Essay 2
related to the dissemination, provision, and sharing of relevant information. Therefore, IL
skills development is an important element of learning by experience, continued employment
and professional practice for a nurse.
Library has always been first method to find academic data and information for all students
for their knowledge development. Although the Google’s popularity is challenging libraries
abilities for thinking about its user requirements in an innovative way, yet we have numerous
reasons to use libraries for getting right information at right time. Primarily, the library has
trustworthy and genuine collection, comprising several data types like numeric data, and
crystallographic data. Additionally, the library has qualified as well as intelligent librarians.
As we know that the human-kind quality of building sense of something is a special skill that
cannot be found in online sources (Liu, et al., 2009). They own critical problems-solving
quality not only for answering any question but also defining user’s questions and address
them effectively through analysing process. Google is having huge digital study materials,
still using and accessing those online study materials is rather restricted many times for their
commercial goals as well as copyright issues, hence libraries are evergreen source of
knowledge and information when needed. In this way, the library is beyond the simple
accumulation of knowledge resources because it is having human development goals and it
delivers knowledge at all level without demanding huge cost. Additionally, libraries existed
in the entire community space and have always been social spaces, either virtually or
physically, where librarians have built long-time good relationships with library users.
Moreover, sources defines that other information providers such as online search engines are
digital tools lacking in human communication as well as tough to be represented interactively
in a novel domain of virtual services (Liu, et al., 2009).
Google scholar being a searching tool of present contemporary world has brought revolution
in each and every discipline of academics. In Nursing’s EBP, IL has become central for all

Essay 3
health as well as social care disciplines. Google scholar is very much useful in information
literacy in nursing because the nurses do not require passwords to access abstracts. Besides,
non-medical terminologies can also be used to execute a search as the requirement typing
medical subjects or headings for the search has ended. Thus, Google Scholar has become an
excellent method to conduct a literature search survey. It gives a primary method of
collecting basic info about a specific subject area. Further, that can be used to form the base
of a detailed search on expert databases: such searches are essential while conducting
complex as well as in-depth literature reviews and systematic reviews (Younger, 2010). The
Google Scholar is native and uncomplicated interface for the nurses who are familiar with
internet use. Another main profit is that now nurses do not need passwords for accessing
abstracts on Google Scholar. However, a subscription or password may be asked to access
full-text articles, depending on accessing source like the internet from home, hospital,
university or any other institution.
Google scholar is better than the library because books as well as academic journals available
on the scholar are having thorough details of the publisher’s editorial and quality control
methods. Now days, the copyrights, as well as restricted access problems have been reduced
to a large extent in order to spread concrete and good knowledge among graduate, post-
graduate and PhD. Scholars. Moreover, if a book or an article has been peer-reviewed, then it
means that it has been reviewed, read, analysed and then commented on by the area
professionals by the authors’ peer group (Younger, 2010). Thus, peer-reviewed articles and
journals can provide better understanding and reliable information about any topic or research
area. In the end, Google scholar is a vital resource of knowledge for better understanding of
the discipline because it has many characteristics like it is a free, as well as emerging info
resource interface. Google scholar is listed on various academic library websites and it is a

Essay 4
research tool containing expensive library database as well as metasearch products like
metalib (Younger, 2010).
Conclusion
In conclusion, IL skill set is having the ability to inspire nurses for gathering relevant data
and info from numerous reliable sources and then applying them in their own motivated
appropriate way. In this context, Google scholar is one of the most effective ways to find
information for nurses because of its easy, simple and quick nature of getting knowledge
about any specified area. Google scholar’s versatile nature has built with countless peer-
reviewed articles, academic journals, abstracts, media articles, theses, academic books, and
various scholarly documents that help nursing scholars and students in finding related correct
information.
References
Liu, S., Liao, S. & Guo, J., 2009. Surviving in the digital age by utilizing libraries' distinctive
advantages. THe Electronic Libarary, 27(2), pp. 298-307.
Younger, P., 2010. Using Google Scholar to conduct a literature search. Nursing Standard,
24(45).