Background: Nurses are the highest numbered healthcare professionals who work in a knowledgedriven environment, where accurate and updated information is needed when delivering care to clients. Information literacy has therefore become one of the criteria in determining nurses’ readiness for evidencebased practice in recent years. In the actual day-to-day care practice, are nurses ready for this?
Objective: To determine the information literacy competency in readiness for evidence-based practice among clinical practicing registered nurses in a private hospital in Penang, Malaysia.
Methods: This cross sectional descriptive study was conducted in the selected private hospital. Universal sampling method was used. At the time of study, there were 443 registered nurses who met the eligibility criteria of this study. The registered nurses were asked to complete a self-reporting questionnaire about information literacy for evidence-based practice.
Results: The response rate was 86.2%, with a total of 382 returned questionnaires. Less than half of the participants (47%) stated that they frequently sourced information to support nursing practice. Poor research experiences among these participants were identified where 56% of the registered nurses never identified researchable problems, 59% have not evaluated a research report and 54% have never utilised research into practice. Registered nurses frequently sought information sources from colleagues or peers (65%) rather than from printed resources, where only 43% and 33% respectively make use of CINAHL and MEDLINE bibliography databases as the electronic resources for their practice.
Conclusions: Results demonstrated that information literacy among registered nurses from this hospital was lacking. Organisation efforts are needed to create awareness of information for evidence-based practice as well as to encourage more research activities and the search of bibliography database among its registered nurses.
Study site: Private hospital, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia