Objective To understand the current status of health information literacy among nurses, and to provide reference for targeted interventions and related research. Methods The descriptive qualitative study method was utilized, semi-structured interviews were conducted among 19 nurses in a tertiary hospital, and content analysis was used to analyze the data and refine themes.Results The word cloud showed that "health" and "information" were the most frequent words with frequencies more than 500 times.Five themes and thirteen subthemes were identified, including multifaceted health information needs, to-be-improved health information seeking ability, satisfactory health information evaluation ability, strong health information application ability and good online health information ethics.Conclusion The health information literacy of nursing staff reflects altruism.Nurses have satisfactory health information ethics, however their health information competence needs to be improved.Training should be strengthened to enhance nurses′ health information literacy and work ability.