Nursing undergraduates' technical competence in informatics

Nurses in the information age need to build their knowledge and abilities in order to be competent in this area. The objective of this study was to verify the knowledge of nursing freshmen (1st semester) and seniors (8th semester) registered in 2008 and 2007, respectively, regarding their ability to use informatics resources. This is a non-experimental, descriptive, exploratory survey. Data collection was performed using a questionnaire based on a set of competences in informatics. The results revealed a low rate of informatics knowledge among the freshmen. However, regarding the applications that students had the most difficulty to operate, between the two periods, seniors had the worst performance, which shows it is necessary to include computer classes in the preparation of these new professional, in order to prepare them for the work market.