Nursing students and internet health information Susan D. Scott a, * , Jean Gilmour a,1 , Jann Fielden b,2 a School of Health and Social Services, Massey University, Wellington Campus, Private Box 756, Wellington, New Zealand b King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, P.O. Box 3354, Riyadh 11211, Saudi Arabia Accepted 1 June 2008 KEYWORDS Nursing education; Undergraduate; Internet health information; Descriptive study Summary This study investigates use of the internet by nursing students to access health information and their evaluation practices in relation to this information. The research method was a retrospective descriptive postal survey. A questionnaire was sent to all undergraduate students enrolled in a Bachelor of Nursing programme at a New Zealand university in 2005. The response rate was 50% or 174 responses. Findings from the study included marked variations in respondents ability to suc- cessfully search for and evaluate relevant internet health and nursing information. Few respondents assessed patients use of the internet to gather health information or assisted patients with evaluation. As searching, evaluating and sharing online information is a core element of nursing practice, formal education to develop com- petency in the ability of all nursing students to retrieve and assess internet health information is essential. The integration of these skills into nursing practice is a vital step in developing new approaches to working with knowledgeable consumers of internet health information.  c 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction Internet access is steadily increasing overall even though there are demographic differences in inter- net use within the population in terms of age, household income and educational level (Statistics New Zealand, 2004). The internet is now an impor- tant source of health information for the general public (Madden and Lee, 2003; Scott et al., 2005). As internet health information becomes increas- ingly accessible nurses along with other health pro- fessionals are expected to engage in information sharing with the public and to assist them with find- ing, understanding and evaluating health informa- tion (Brooks, 2001; Eberhart-Phillips et al., 2000; Fielden et al., 2003). Various research findings sug- gest however that the nursing profession has been 0260-6917/$ - see front matter  c 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2008.06.002 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +64 4 801 2794x6827; fax: +64 4 801 2884. E-mail addresses: S.D.Scott@massey.ac.nz (S.D. Scott), J.A.Gilmour@massey.ac.nz (J. Gilmour), jfielden@kfshrc.edu.sa (J. Fielden). 1 Tel.: +64 4 801 2794x6325. 2 Tel.: +966 1 464 7272x35142. Nurse Education Today (2008) 28, 993–1001 www.elsevier.com/nedt Nurse Education Today