107 - Evaluating Evidence in an Infodemic: Web Literacy Instruction for RN-to-BSN Students

Background: To limit the spread of COVID-19 and treat patients effectively, nurses have had to make difficult decisions in terms of what evidence to trust—often implementing preventive practices and treatments in real-time with emergent research findings. However, the urgency of the pandemic has transformed the production and dissemination of research. Research published on preprint servers rapidly disseminates through news outlets and social media often before peer-review (Else, 2020). In order to prepare RN-to-BSN students to navigate this information ecosystem, a librarian and nursing faculty developed an innovative program to build web-literacy skills in a ten-week introductory information literacy course.

Description: Using the ACRL Framework (2016) to design learning outcomes, a librarian and nursing faculty member adapted Mike Caulfield’s open-source Check, Please Starter Course into a five-module reflection journal. ‘Check, Please’ introduces lateral reading using Caulfield’s S.I.F.T. method for evaluating web-sources and claims. To connect to nursing, we adapted module questions to include aspects of meta-literacy (Mackey & Jacobsen, 2011) and a nursing clinical judgement model (Tanner, 2006). After completing each module, students responded to questions asking them to reflect on experiences, assumptions, beliefs, and clinical practice in connection with S.I.F.T. Two example questions include:
1. What beliefs or biases might influence who and what information you trust?
2. To what extent has the publication and dissemination of COVID-19 research sowed distrust in public health authorities? Is this distrust warranted? Why or why not?

Conclusion: After preliminary analysis, qualitative data appears promising. Reflection journals demonstrate the many ways RNs use the internet and social media. For example, students described how web-literacy skills inform their clinical judgment such as investigating treatments and educating patients. These findings align with Diekema et al. (2019) that practicing nurses need quick, credible information in clinical practice, providing additional justification for web-literacy instruction in nursing education. Furthermore, students reflected on their ethical duty as nurses to locate, use, and share the best available evidence when making clinical care decisions with their patients and communities. The pandemic presents a unique opportunity to re-envision how health information literacy instruction can equip frontline clinicians to lead in this historic time.