Information Management Education for Students in the Health Care Professions

Information in the health sciences has experienced a tremendous growth in the last twenty years making it necessary for professionals in these fields to be skillful in retrieving new information. Information management instruction enables students in the health sciences to understand how the literature is organized and how to retrieve relevant information on topics, thus becoming informed information consumers and leading to life-long learning. In order to ensure that fundamental information management skills are taught to students in the colleges of Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health & Professionals at the University of South Alabama, a project was undertaken to design a coordinated, organized program of information management education for each College. After development, and working within the academic system at the University, the plan was adopted and implemented. The result is a design for integrated information management that eliminates gaps and overlap in the information management education of students in health care professions. Thee program is dynamic in that it is periodically revised in order to incorporate new technology and the changing needs of the faculty and students.