The Information Needs and
Information Seeking of Nurse Practitioners

Keith Wilson Cogdill

School of Information and Library Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Abstract

This dissertation reports on an investigation of nurse practitioners' (NPs') information needs and information seeking. Prior research of information needs and information seeking among health professionals has focused primarily on physicians. Several studies have explored physicians' experiences of needing and seeking information as a consequence of encounters with patients. Results of these studies have provided an improved understanding of the types of needs that arise in the minds of physicians as well as the sources of information consulted in efforts to resolve these needs. This investigation initiates a similar vein of research in the population of NPs, health professionals who are responsible for providing an increasing proportion of primary care.

To address research questions pertaining to NPs' information needs and information seeking, this investigation entailed two phases of data collection. The initial phase of data collection was the administration of a questionnaire to three hundred NPs who were asked to report their experience of needing information as a result of patient encounters as well as their experience of seeking information. The second phase of data collection entailed a series of interviews with twenty NPs after encounters with patients to collect data on instances of information needs and information seeking.

Results of this study indicate that NPs most frequently need information related to drug therapy and diagnosis, in that order. NPs with a master's degree were found to experience information needs more frequently than their colleagues who had not received a master's degree. The information resources NPs use most frequently are consultations with colleagues, drug reference manuals and textbooks and protocol manuals. NPs are more likely to pursue needs related to drug therapy with a print resource and needs related to diagnosis with a colleague. The urgency of a need was found to be a significant positive predictor of information seeking. The generalizability of information related to a need, however, was a significant negative predictor of information seeking.

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