Info Ch.20

US based organization that promotes libraries and library education internationally.

A comprehensive nursing and allied health literature database.

• A comprehensive educational resources database
• An international database of educational literature

• As the organizing framework of this text, the model proposes that humans are organic information
• systems constantly acquiring, processing, and generating information or knowledge in both their professional and personal lives.

an intellectual framework for finding, understanding, evaluating, and using information

Because nursing informatics combines all aspects of clinical practice, research, administration, and education, the ability to recognize the need for a specific kind of information and locate, evaluate, and use effectively use it within the nursing informatics paradigm will catapult nurses ahead of other healthcare professionals in applying and engaging various facets of technology.

• Professional Online Databases
• Search Engines
• Electronic Library Catalogs

A source of online information generally invisible to all Internet users except those with professional or academic affiliations, such as faculty, staff and students.

allow users to surf the Web and find information on nearly anything.

Nearly all higher education institutions have their library catalogs online.

• Nurses and Data Collection
• Nurses’ Observations and Available Tools
• The Help of Software
• Quantitative Data Collection Tools
• Innovative Electronic Data Collection

Nurses are already intimately familiar with data collection as daily agents of patient care documentation, patient monitoring, and interview data

• Software designed to collect, sort, organize, store, retrieve, select and aggregate data
• are Database Management Systems (DBMS).

Quantitative data collection tools or “instruments” include questionnaires, interviews, surveys, quizzes, assessments, e-mail interviews and Web-based surveys.

the system used by the participants in the Nightingale Tracker System pilot study in which nursing students traveling to rural clinical sites submitted information into handheld devices while miles away from their preceptor-supervisors.

• Data Analysis
• Descriptive Statistics
• The Focus of Quantitative Data
• Quantitative Studies
• Qualitative Data
• Types of Qualitative Data
• How Computers Help
• Data Analysis
• The Use of Statistical Analysis

the process by which data collected during the course of a study isprocessed to identify trends and patterns of relationships.

allows the researcher to organize information meaningfully

focuses on numbers and frequencies rather than experience and meaning

variables represented by data are collected in numerical form

concerned with describing meaning that in drawing statistical inferences

Some major types of qualitative data include in-depth interviews, direct observation, and written documents.

Computers can aid greatly in the storage, tabulation and retrieval of qualitative data by acting as the equivalent of an electronic filing cabinet.

Qualitative data analysis can also be aided by simple data management programs, such as Excel, in which a user can categorize data and link categories with key words.

Quantitative data analysis includes statistical analysis in which samples and populations are compared, in order to discern whether the sample is biased or reflective of a true situation.