Senior student nurses information seeking skills: a comparative study

History-taking instruction for baccalaureate nursing students by virtual patient training: A retrospective study

BACKGROUND

History taking is difficult for nursing students with little clinical experience. Virtual patients (VPs) can supplement traditional teaching to some extent. However, the high cost of VPs limits their widespread personal use. "Sun Yat-sen University Nursing Education Platform" (SYSU-NEP) is a software program designed on WeChat that can provide VPs for nursing history-taking sessions. SYSU-NEP is characterized by ease of use, accessibility and capacity to facilitate autonomous learning.

OBJECTIVE

To assess history-taking instruction for baccalaureate nursing students after VP training using WeChat.

METHOD

This was a retrospective analysis of the effectiveness of SYSU-NEP, which provided 13 VPs for history-taking instruction based on the Functional Health Pattern framework. Each VP session consisted of 17 parts, and data were derived from conversations between the baccalaureate nursing students and the VPs from September 2016 to January 2017. The effectiveness of history taking was assessed by the hit rate for each of the 17 VP parts. Hit rates in this case identify the completeness of the students' patient history taking. Furthermore, software usage by the students was assessed by an automated survey on SYSU-NEP.

RESULTS

Fifty-seven students participated in 570 VP history-taking sessions. Of the 17 VP parts, the five parts with the lowest hit rates were personal history (median: 0.00, interquartile range: 0.00-0.00), Coping/Stress and Self-Perception/Self-Concept (median: 0.00, interquartile range: 0.00-0.00), Cognitive Perception (median: 0.00, interquartile range: 0.00-2.50), Activity/Exercise (median: 0.00, interquartile range: 0.00-3.00) and Sexual-Reproductive (median: 0.00, interquartile range: 0.00-12.81). Thirty-six students participated in the survey voluntarily and thirty-five students (97%) believed that the software was helpful for learning about patient history taking.

CONCLUSIONS

SYSU-NEP provides a platform for nursing students for history taking self-practice. Students' weaknesses were identified clearly through data analysis. The students were enthusiastic about the usefulness of the software.

Comparison of effects of training programs for final year nursing students in Turkey: differences in self-efficacy with regard to information literacy

BACKGROUND

Information literate person are aware of where and how they can obtain the information they need. Little is known about student nurses information literacy skills in different education programs.

OBJECTIVES

To find out how final year nursing students rated their own abilities to acquire new information.

DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS

This study used comparative and descriptive cross-sectional surveys. Participants were final year students in two different programs, in two different universities in Turkey.

METHODS

The study sample consisted of final year nursing students who received training in Classic Learning (N: 61) and Problem-Based Learning (N: 96). As an evaluation instrument for the perceptions of the students their own information literacy, a scale consisting of 28 questions with 7 Likert ratings for each was used (min: 28, max: 196).

RESULTS

The return rates of the surveys were 96.7% in the school with classic training and 81.2% in the school with PBL. It was found that the average scores of the students were high, with a mean of 137±29 in the school where the classic training program was carried out, and 163±21 in the school where the training was PBL. A statistically significant difference was found by comparing the average scores of the two independent groups (t : -6.0; p<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Students in both of the training programs rated themselves as high. However, PBL training had a stronger influence on the development of their self-perceptions regarding information literacy. We conclude that training programs should be reviewed, and new methods should be developed based on these concepts.

Profiling information behaviour of nursing students: part 2: derivation of profiles

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to develop information behaviour profiles for nursing students, to help inform information literacy programmes.

Design/methodology/approach

– The methods include further analysis of quantitative findings (previously reported in part 1), together with qualitative research data collection and analysis. Critical incident type interviews with 11 students were transcribed and analysed using an interpretative categorisation method that used dendrograms for data display and analysis. From the regression analysis of the quantitative data, the micro-processes for information seeking were linked to learning styles, and then to personality traits to generate information seeking profiles. Integration of the qualitative findings led to development of a task-based information search model.

Findings

– The start list of seven categories for qualitative analysis (derived from a literature review) was refined (one category added, one removed, with some relabelling). The quantitative data analysis revealed seven profiles (deep adventurer, deep identifier, deep investigator, strategic all-rounder, strategic collector, surface co-ordinator, surface skimmer, each linked to a particular learning style, personality trait, and preferred information seeking micro-processes).

Research limitations/implications

– The data were collected at only one university and the profiles and the model need to be validated with data from other groups of nursing students. The findings on micro-processes consolidate and extend previous research.

Practical implications

– The profiles should inform information literacy programmes as they show that information search profiles may be more varied than assumed. The information search model extends previous task-based information search models.

Originality/value

– The information search profiles have not been identified previously.

Information literacy assessment

Interest in developing ways to assess information literacy has been growing for several years. Many librarians have developed their own tools to assess aspects of information literacy and have written articles to share their experiences. This article reviews the literature and offers readers a flavour of the methods being used for assessment: those which are popular within the field and also illustrative examples from some of the case studies found, particularly where they show how the reliability and validity of the methods have been considered. It does not aim to be an exhaustive list of case studies or methods, but a representative sample to act as a `jumping off point' for librarians considering introducing assessment of information literacy into their own institutions.