Information Needs and Seeking Behaviour Among Nursing Students in Uvwie Local Government Area, Delta State, Nigeria.

Abstract

Nursing education is based on the uninterrupted and consistent access to health information, although the structural and systemic factors contributing to the access or limiting it are not sufficiently investigated on the sub-regional level. In this research, the researcher explored the information-seeking behaviour and information requirement of nursing students pursuing a degree course in three accredited training institutions in Uvwie Local Government Area (LGA), Delta State, Nigeria. It was based on a descriptive survey design with the study systematically going through three key dimensions: the nature and scope of the information needs that the students face, the sources that they regularly use to pursue those needs and the obstacles that impede efficient retrieval of information. The data from structured questionnaires were collected among 170 nursing students (90.9% response rate), and reliability was checked with the help of Cronbach's alpha (= 0.82). The review revealed a wide range of information requirements, with the most salient ones being examination preparation resources, pharmacological sources, and clinical procedural knowledge. The most common sources of information were the internet search engines, the notes given out by the instructors, and the peer communication channels. Despite this seeming resourcefulness, there are still systemic barriers to it, namely the lack of good network infrastructure, the skyrocketing cost of learning content and the insufficiency of the institutional library collections, which cripple the ability of the students to engage in information optimally. The paper holds that although nursing students exhibit a high adaptive agency to fulfill their information needs, the contexts within which they learn have been structurally inadequate to support the evidence-based learning activities. Practical responses in the form of infrastructural investment, modernisation of library resources, and formal integration of the information literacy competencies into the nursing curricula are suggested to be considered as priority responses.