Promoting library services to qualified nurses: towards a market-led approach

This article summarizes a research project carried out with the nursing staff of South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust. A 'community profile' looked at nurses' use of library and information services for patient care purposes and found that only a small portion of all categories of qualified staff were library users. A postal questionnaire was used to investigate why nurses sought information, what they used it for, where they obtained it from and how valuable they perceived it to be. The results shown that personal and departmental collections were used quite frequently and the information was widely disseminated by the nurses to patients and their families, to colleagues and to students. The overall message from the survey was that the information obtained is valued highly and is used for various important purposes in health care delivery, such as educating patients and their families and revising treatment plans. However, nurses have difficulty in accessing libraries, which are judged to contain the most accurate, reliable and up-to-date information. The data from the community profile and questionnaire were further analysed using soft systems methodology, in order to identify problems in the traditional model of information delivery to nurses via conventional library and information service. These were then investigated further and a series of recommendations for action drawn up.