Workplace Learning and Information Practices of Newly Qualified Nurses in a Hospital

Hospitals are complex information environments, and new health care personnel have to learnhow to handle many different information sources (Bonner & Lloyd, 2011; Isah & Byström, 2016;Lloyd, 2009). Every year hospitals are recruiting numerous new employees, predominantly nurses.Newly qualified nurses are expected to fully operate in a multi-professional environment, and to deal with different types of information to save patients’ lives. Thus, the transition from being a nursing student to a newly qualified nurse can be challenging and daunting (Edwards, Hawker, Carrier, & Rees, 2015). To address these challenges, this study focuses on nurses’ information needs and their conventional practices in relation to searching, evaluating, using, sharing and producing information. It takes place in a training program for newly qualified nurses in a hospital in Norway, and it’s main research question is: What characterizes information practices in a hospital, in the context of a program for newly qualified nurses?