An introduction to the concepts of information literacy for health sciences students.

1. An Introduction
to
Information Literacy
for the Health Sciences Student
Mark D. Puterbaugh
Reference Librarian
Paul Robeson Library
Rutgers University – Camden
Sept. 2018

2. Why Is This Important?
As a professional in the health sciences you will need
to relate important health information to the
people you serve.
You will help people make proper health decisions.
While in school, you are learning skills for life.
Think of your class assignments as practice for the
future.
Learn proper information literacy habits now and
they will be natural in your professional life.

3. A Definition of Information Literacy
“Information Literacy is the set of skills
needed to find, retrieve, analyze, and use
information.”

4. A Definition of Health Information
Literacy
The Medical Library Association
has devised a working
definition of health
information literacy.“Health Information Literacy is the set
of abilities needed to: recognize a
health information need; identify
likely information sources and use
them to retrieve relevant
information; assess the quality of
the information and its applicability
to a specific situation; and analyze,
understand, and use the
information to make good health
decisions.”

5. Where can you start?
Discerning reliable and authoritative
health and medical information from
the deluge of related resources on the
Internet is difficult.
The problem is compounded if you, as a
student, are new to the study of health
and medical information.

6. Authoritative Resources
In this course, we will focus on
authoritative and reliable resources
that you can use for your academic
research.
The resources will help you obtain the
best information available for your
academic and professional lives.

7. We will be direct!
Reliable health sciences information is very
important.
In school, the wrong type of information can
hurt your grade in a class.
In the work place, the wrong type
information may endanger lives.
We will point you to authoritative and
reliable resources for both class and life.
Health sciences students should be
information literate. More importantly,
they should be health information literate.

8. Two Literacy Types
Health Literacy Information Literacy
Focus on Communicating
Information.
Focus on Discovery Methods and
Search Techniques.
The two literacies have many commonalities; their focus is different.
Jane Lawless, Coleen E. Toronto, Gail L. Grammatica, (2016) "Health literacy and information
literacy: a concept comparison", Reference Services Review, Vol. 44 Issue: 2, pp.144-162, doi:
10.1108/RSR-02-2016-0013
Permanent link to this document:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/RSR-02-2016-0013

9. Health Literacy
"Studies show as many as half of all adults in
all socio-economic levels struggle with
health literacy, defined as the ability to
read, understand and act on spoken and
written health information from medical
professionals.”
Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2003

10. The People You Will Serve
In a September 2012 survey of
adult Internet users, 72% of the
respondents said that they
looked online for health
information within the past year.
http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/health-fact-sheet/

11. What Are They Using?
Seventy-seven percent of online health
seekers say they began their
information seeking at a search
engine such as Google, Bing, or
Yahoo.
http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/health-fact-sheet/

12. Seeking Advice
The facts are 35% of U.S. adults say that at one time or another they have
gone online specifically to try to figure out what medical condition they or
someone else might have.
One in five Internet users has consulted online reviews and rankings of health
care service providers and treatments.
Additionally, 18% of Internet users, or 13% of adults, have gone online to find
others who might have health concerns similar to theirs. People living with
chronic and rare conditions are significantly more likely to do this.
http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/health-fact-sheet/

13. Patients Trust the Web
Earlier surveys reveal that 75% of
health information-seeking adults
on the Internet rarely or never
check the source or date of the
information they have found.
Among the health information-
seeking adults, 72% express trust
in most or all information they
have found online.
Source: Fox, S. Vital Decisions (2003). Online Health Search (2006). Washington, DC: Pew Internet &
American Life Project.

14. Patients Trust Healthcare
Providers More
When people have questions related to a health issue, their
health care providers are the most trusted information
source.
http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/health-fact-sheet/

15. You Will Be A Trusted Health
Information Provider.
Now is the time for you to learn about
the best tools for finding health and
medical information.
There are resources freely available
that you can share with confidence
throughout your professional life.

16. Information Literacy for the
Health Sciences Student
The information gathering and
processing skills you learn in class will
help you in your professional life.
Conduct research in an organized way.
This organization is essential in the
classroom and the workplace.
Organizing your research saves time and
increases the quality of results.

17. Thinking It Through
If you have the option of selecting
to choose your research topic,
choose a subject that interests
you.
Satisfying your curiosity makes the
work much more enjoyable. You
may find that you know a great
deal already.

18. When selecting your topic, you should
ask if there are adequate resources
available to you to develop the
theme.
Check with a librarian to see if the
information you need is available
through the library.
The librarian can help you locate
materials whether in the library or
from other libraries using inter-library
loan.
Adequate Resources

19. Adequate Time
How soon is the paper due?
Finding the right materials takes time.
Reading your research takes time. Writing
the paper takes time.
When selecting a topic make sure that you
can manage your time to do the research,
acquire information and the properly
compose your paper.

20. Test Yourself
Test yourself to see what you
already know about the topic.
Create a list of words that you
feel are relevant to your
research interest.
The more you can focus your
thoughts the more relaxed
the research process will be.

21. Is your theme too broad or too
narrow?
Finding the right balance takes
thought. The balance can be
delicate. You might start with a
topic and see there’s not enough
time or resources to do what you
need to do.
Be flexible enough to broaden or
narrow your research to meet class
deadlines..

22. Too Broad A Topic
Writing a paper about “diabetes” seems
like an excellent topic for research.
However, doing a few example
searches will reveal a very complex
subject that needs to be narrowed
down.
 A PubMed database search for
diabetes alone returns over
300,000 records.
 A CINAHL database search for
diabetes alone will return over
40,000 records.

23. Better to Narrow the Topic
Narrowing the subject with a search about
“insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus” is a
better choice for a theme. But this is still too
broad.
Sample searches will return far too many items to
review in a semester.
• A PubMed search for diabetes mellitus
AND insulin-dependent will return over
24,000 records.
• A CINAHL search for diabetes mellitus
AND insulin-dependent will return over
16,000 records.

24. Even Better
Writing about "insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus
and the aged over 65” is more focused. However,
it is still too broad a subject.
• A PubMed search for diabetes mellitus
AND insulin-dependent AND aged over 65
returns over 4000 records.
• A CINAHL search for diabetes mellitus
AND insulin-dependent AND aged over 65
returns over 400 records.
Try adding terms such as:
• nursing practice
• diet changes
• physical exercise
• medical treatment

25. Ask Yourself Some Serious
Questions
You must choose your topic with a definite goal. At
the end of the research process, what specific think
will you have learned?
Focus your thoughts by determining just what you
want to learn. Think of concrete examples that turn
your research into healthcare practice.

26. Question Examples
Here are a few example topic based on the searches
above:
• How can healthcare providers assist the elderly coping
with insulin-dependence on their own?
• Can the healthcare provider promote a “sense of
empowerment” for insulin-dependent elderly through
“self-care”?
• How can a healthcare provider help elderly patients cope
with the social implications of insulin-dependence?

27. Information Type?
Once you have formulated a topic question or proposition, determine
the type of information that you will need.
• Case Report (or series) - "descriptive study of a group of people, usually
receiving the same treatment or with the same disease."
• Clinical Practice Guideline - "systematically developed statements to assist
practitioner and patient making decisions about appropriate health care for
specific clinical circumstances."
• Evidence-based Practice - articles that reflect "the conscientious, explicit and
judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of
individual patients"
• Technical Report - documents that describe the process, progress, and or results
of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or scientific research
problem or something else.

28. Tasks
Over the next few sessions, we will look at the resources you need
to consider when doing research for your classes.
Do the student activity for this lesson.
Then proceed to the next lesson.