This document provides information and guidance for health sciences students on developing information literacy skills. It defines information literacy and health information literacy as the abilities needed to find, evaluate, and apply relevant information to make good health decisions. The document emphasizes that these skills are important for students' academic success and future professional work, when communicating health information and advising patients. It highlights authoritative library resources that can help students conduct reliable research.

1. Information Literacy
for the Health Sciences
Student
Introduction

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 Health 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 have 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
checks 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
healthcare 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. Health Information Literacy
The information gathering and
processing skills you learn in class will
help you in your professional life.
Conduct research in an organized way.
This is important 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 own
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 in order to develop the
topic.
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 easier the research
process will be.

21. Is your theme too broad or too
narrow?
Finding the right balance takes thought.
This can be difficult. You might start with
a topic and find there’s not enough time
or resources to do exactly 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 topic that needs narrowed
down.
• A PubMed database search for diabetes
alone returns over 300,000 records.
• A CINAHL database search for diabetes
alone will returns over 40,000 records.

23. Better to Narrow the Topic
Writing about “insulin-dependent diabetes
mellitus” is better choice for a topic but 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 focusing more. However, it is still too broad.
• 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 turns 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.