New nurses apply only basic source evaluation criteria but realize their skills are lacking: More sophisticated approaches to teaching evaluation skills are required

Background While information evaluation is an essential component of evidence based practice, it remains unclear how nurses perceive their own source evaluation skills and what evaluation criteria they typically apply. Objectives This study aims to determine nurses' self-reported confidence in their evaluation skills and their actual source evaluation ability. The findings will guide information literacy instruction. Methods A questionnaire asked recently graduated nurses from four institutions in the Intermountain West (USA) to rate their confidence in evaluating information and to provide examples of evaluation criteria they typically applied. The quality of these criteria was rated by nursing librarians, then compared with reported confidence in evaluation, years employed as a nurse and highest degree level. Results While nurses' self-reported confidence levels about source evaluation largely matched their ability, their evaluation criteria showed a low level of sophistication and did not match the recommended criteria by professional organizations. Graduate education, not years of work experience, was predictive of the quality of criteria used by nurses, suggesting the importance of more instruction on source evaluation for nursing students. Conclusions Nursing educators, including librarians, need to teach evaluation skills at the undergraduate level. Further investigation into building evaluation skills in nurses is warranted.