Bedford, David (2018) Nurses must consider which information to use and trust. Nursing Times (Readers' blogs section). ISSN 0954-7762

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Abstract

All professionals must make critical choices about what information they use to inform their practice. This is true of me as a librarian, and even more so of health professionals such as nurses.

After all, one of the statements in the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s Code is “Always practise in line with the best available evidence”. But how do you establish what the “best available evidence” is?

Librarians refer to the skills needed to make these choices as information literacy, and we see this as being different in each professional situation – the criteria that make information useful and trustworthy are not the same for everyone.

In my work with students of nursing and other health professions, I have developed a thinking tool called BREAD. This is an easy-to-remember reminder of five key aspects to consider when thinking about information: bias. relevance. evidence. author and date.

These five points can be used when selecting information both for academic assignments and for clinical practice. Other similar tools exist of course, but this was developed with the particular concerns of healthcare in mind.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	evaluating information, study skills, critical thinking, library, nursing, information literacy
Subjects:	R Medicine > RT Nursing
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Information & Library Services
Last Modified:	30 Nov 2018 11:46
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/21525

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