Nurses’ Net needs

Abstract

More and more healthcare professionals are becoming experienced in the use of the Internet and having seen some of the resources available they are now becoming able to identify the sorts of features which would be useful to them. This paper describes a study to identify what United Kingdom (UK) nurses, midwives and health visitors want from an Internet service dedicated to their needs. An online questionnaire was used to find out their views as to the importance of various possible content areas and to enable them to make comments. Data were obtained from 126 self-selecting respondents over two months, and the study is ongoing. Initial results revealed wide variations in the areas that were seen as being important and in the sorts of services they would find useful from the Internet; there were, however, some consistent themes. Respondents felt that speciality information, peer-reviewed articles and bibliographic databases were the most important areas and that job advertisements, local information and mailing lists were the least important. The importance of these results for future investment in and development of an Internet service for this group of users is considered. © 2000, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.