Information needs, information accessibility and knowledge sharing among health professionals in Federal Teaching Hospitals, South-West, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigates the relationship between information needs, information accessibility and knowledge sharing among health professionals in the Teaching Hospitals in South-West, Nigeria. A self-developed, pre-tested and validated questionnaire was adopted as the research instrument. Total enumeration technique was used to administer copies of the questionnaire. Pearson product moment correlation and multiple regression was used to interpret the data. The study revealed that both information need and information accessibility contributed positively and significantly to the knowledge sharing, whereas information accessibility (β =0.615) contributed more to the prediction of the knowledge sharing than information needs. It is therefore recommended that continuous awareness must be given to the public by stakeholders in the information fields about available information resources while at the same creating strategies through which the information can be propagated via accessibility easily. By extension, teaching of information retrieval skills should be aggressively embarked on in order to achieve propagation and accessibility of information.