Companion Document to the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education: Nursing DRAFT

Nurses assimilate, synthesize and produce information to convey a message, which they share via a selected delivery method. Nurses engage in an iterative process of researching, creating, revising, and disseminating information. The products they create reflect this iterative process.

Nurses use and create a variety of information sources for their education, practice, and research. Both entry-level and advanced-level nurses encounter information from various sources in multiple formats, including datasets and metrics, peer-reviewed publications, point-of-care tools, policies and procedures, stakeholder interviews, practice guidelines, and more. While engaging with information, nurses examine the processes underlying the information creation to evaluate its authority and usefulness and to check for biases. Information use and creation may occur within a variety of care settings, including inpatient or outpatient; rural or urban; in-person or virtual; and local or national or global, each of which may influence the information creation process.

Entry level nurses typically create information that influences health care delivery at the patient level or unit level. They identify questions or problems, search relevant sources, gather best evidence and synthesize information to respond to the outstanding needs. They create and disseminate messages through a variety of information products: care plans, patient education materials, policies, healthcare interventions, action plans, scholarship, and strategies. Nurses acknowledge that information creation processes must evolve over time due to changes in settings, policies, technologies, and other external influences and they must continue to develop their expertise.

Advanced level nurses create information that influences health care delivery at all levels. They engage in quality improvement processes to develop and assess practice changes over time. As part of lifelong learning, they seek new information created and disseminated by nurse scholars and researchers from other disciplines. Advanced level nurses also synthesize or translate evidence for nurses of all educational levels, other health care professionals, patients, and external stakeholders.

Evidence of the Frame in Action

• An undergraduate nursing student identifies a topic of interest, performs a literature search, interviews community members, and incorporates relevant information to create a poster with key points and visualizations to portray important findings to their classmates. 
• A nurse incorporates the latest information on vaccines into a variety of formats that can be shared in outpatient care settings and through social media channels.  
• A graduate nursing student who has written a paper around an evidence-based practice change later transfers the knowledge gained to a quality improvement project at their practice site. 
• A nurse at a public health agency converses with multiple stakeholders to identify and investigate a community problem and then disseminates data from case loads, relevant government information and literature searching through a presentation, a report, and spreadsheets.
• An ICU nurse notices an increased number of unit admissions with antibiotic resistant tuberculosis. They investigate the implications for their unit and write a care guidance document that is shared with all direct caregivers.
• A rural ER nurse sees a billboard on their drive to work that disseminates inaccurate information about drug addiction. Not seeing a counterpoint available to ER patients, they work with their colleagues to develop a brochure with accurate information and a list of resources for help with substance abuse disorder.
• To produce higher level evidence to guide diabetes education, a nurse scholar produces a systematic or umbrella review with an international team of colleagues.

Competencies

Nurses who are developing their information literacy abilities:

• Describe issues of access or lack of access to information sources [Remembering];
• Recognize the validity of non-dominant information creation processes [Remembering];
• Identify appropriate resources for translating evidence into practice [Understanding];
• Choose where and how their information is disseminated [Applying];
• Differentiate between types of information and how they can be utilized in various contexts or situations [Analyzing];
• Understand how and why the information creation process will vary based on cultures, community settings, and identities [Evaluating]; and
• Compile information from various sources and synthesize findings into new resources [Creating].