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

Communities of nurse scholars, researchers, and professionals engage in sustained discourse with new insights and discoveries occurring over time as a result of varied perspectives, interpretations, and observations.

Nursing scholarship is the “communication of knowledge generated through multiple forms of inquiry that inform clinical practice, nursing education, policy, and healthcare delivery" (AACN Essentials).  Nurses must learn to use and communicate scholarship effectively, engaging in critical conversations and sustained discourse to achieve excellence in teaching, learning, research, scholarship, service, and practice. Nurses recognize that factors such as established power and authority structures and issues of privilege may impact if and how they can participate in scholarly conversations as well as which voices and information rise to the forefront. They work to ensure that the perspectives of others, both professionals and patients, are invited, welcomed, acknowledged and respected. Attribution practices are essential for showing the development of ideas, moving conversations forward, and capturing the breadth of potential relevant voices.

Entry level nurses are learning to exemplify the nursing profession’s unique perspective while incorporating and applying the complementary scholarship and perspectives of other healthcare disciplines. They are identifying trusted scholars and resources in nursing and other disciplines to inform their practice. Through interprofessional and intraprofessional teams, they are beginning to generate new knowledge and to consider communication avenues for their scholarship.

Advanced level nurses will seek out many perspectives, which may come from their own discipline or from across a variety of disciplines.  They are comfortable interpreting and applying the scholarship of others as well as generating new knowledge. They are open to learning about new and emerging formats for scholarly work, and actively seek ways to invite more voices to participate in scholarship to inform clinical practice, nursing education, policy, and healthcare delivery.

Evidence of the Frame in Action 

• A nurse wanting to use an end-of-life communication tool in their practice finds one by reading a systematic review and then checks its citing papers to see how the tool has been used and modified.
• A nurse scholar completes a bibliometric analysis on patient safety to show how the topic has changed in the literature over time.
• A nurse searches for evidence on the use of cranberry juice for urinary tract infections and finds that the evidence has flipped back and forth as new evidence has emerged. They recognize more research is needed.
• A nurse reads an account of design thinking in business and recognizes an opening to tie that into the nursing field.
• A nurse starts a podcast to open conversations on health policy topics. They interview people from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives to engage in discussion and also invite participation from their audiences.

Competencies

Nurses who are developing their information literacy abilities:

• Recognize that scholarly conversation is a forum for research to evolve over time as the body of evidence grows [Remembering];
• Understand that diverse perspectives and experiences better inform the scholarly conversation [Understanding];
• Participate in critical conversations and sustained discourse as an element of teaching, learning, research, scholarship, service, and/or practice [Applying];
• Identify the contribution of individual scholarly works and perspectives in a scholarly conversation [Analyzing];
• Argue the impact of a source by locating and analyzing sources that cite or otherwise utilize that particular source. [Evaluating]; and
• Help cultivate welcoming, inviting, and respectful communities of discourse through engaged participation with the perspectives and experiences of others [Creating].