Many studies had assessed what information nurses need and use in general or in nurses' role-related tasks. No single study had investigated information needs and uses for specific nursing-care activities such as care for patients dying or experiencing pain. This original study aimed to describe and explore these missing aspects by employing Henderson and Nite's Principles and Practice in Nursing to describe nursing-care activities and Dervin's Sense-Making Theory and Wilson's Model of Information Behavior to explore Thai nurses' information needs and uses and the factors influencing them. Stratified sampling, with proportional allocation, was applied to survey 990 baccalaureate-degree nurses at 86 public hospitals, drawn from 56,323 target nurses at 834 target hospitals throughout Thailand. The study employed a researcher-developed questionnaire, preliminarily tested with 30 Thai and 23 American nurses, validated by 7 content experts after refinement, and pilot-tested with a convenient sample of 30 Thai nurses. Data collection was done from April to July 2007. Analysis included both descriptive and inferential statistics such as generalized estimating equations (GEE). With 769 returned questionnaires (77.7% response rate), the results revealed that Thai nurses needed information from their colleagues, doctors, and printed/electronic information sources more than other sources. For most activities, the printed/electronic source they used the most was printed standards/protocols, followed by printed textbooks, because these sources were available, easy to get, reliable, and trustful. For nursing care and practice in general, they needed and used their colleagues, patients/family, doctors, printed kardex, patient charts/records, and printed textbooks the most, because these sources were available, easy to get, not difficult to understand, and tied to their nursing care and practice. Despite their rather positive attitudes towards information needs and uses, the nurses rarely used libraries, did not read research, and did not use research databases. No time to use, unavailability of research databases, and research being difficult to understand were the primary reasons of not using. Therefore, in order to adopt evidence-based practice into nursing, research information should be integrated into printed standards/protocols and textbooks and made available at hand.
