The information needs and information seeking behaviour of family doctors: a selective literature review
Health Libraries ReviewPublished 1 June 2000Open access
Sue Lacey Bryant
Citations35
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TL;DR
This literature review is to indicate publications that have made a significant contribution to understanding of the information wants, needs, behaviour and preferences of family physicians and to identify areas in which there is scope for further research.
Abstract
Abstract General practitioners play a central role in primary care. Clinical Governance and advances in Information and Communications Technology dominate the agenda for change. The aim of this literature review is to indicate publications that have made a significant contribution to understanding of the information wants, needs, behaviour and preferences of family physicians and to identify areas in which there is scope for further research. Concentrating on material published in the 1990s, this review looks at the information needs of family doctors and at their information seeking behaviour. Work on the needs of General Medical Practices and of Primary Care Groups is included. The review discusses studies of information gatekeepers and projects intended to augment access to information services. A few texts are recommended as essential reading.
Keywords
MedicineHealth Professions
Medical Decision MakingInformation Seeking in Primary Care
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Primary care physicians are significantly more likely to pursue answers to their clinical questions when they believe that definitive answers to those questions exist, and when they perceive the patient's problem to be urgent.
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The review describes the decision points in the production process for consensus recommendations as a start on the development of a set of recognized standards, and offers a critical appraisal of the various methodological choices available at each decision point.
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The current views and research on implementing guidelines are explored and some recommendations on methods and approaches to quality improvement in general practice are suggested.
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The most effective combined strategies appeared to be all combinations with individual instruction and the combination of peer review and feedback, which seems to be the most effective single strategies.
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Journal of the American Society for Information ScienceInformation needs of physicians
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This article offers a framework for explicitly defining the types of information that clinicians use and the various states of information need on which different studies have focused, and moves beyond measures of the relevance of retrieved information to assessing the extent to which information systems help practitioners solve the clinical problems they face in practice.
PubMedPhysicians' preferences for information sources: a meta-analytic study.
153 Citations1997James D. Haug
This study categorizes and ranks the physicians' preferred information sources reported in each study, then aggregates and counts the frequencies of the top six preferences, as well as the associated first and second preferences, for all the study populations or their strata.
PubMedUse of information sources by family physicians: a literature survey.
94 Citations1995Anita Verhoeven, E.J. Boerma +1 more
A survey of the literature on information use by family physicians showed that family physicians used colleagues most often as information sources, followed by journals and books, which corresponded with results in other professions.
PubMedPhysician information seeking: improving relevance through research.
80 Citations1990Larry D. Gruppen
Compte rendu and resultat d'une etude qui cherchait a identifier dans quel contexte les medecins recherchent des informations, et suggere qu'il est interessant pour les bibliotheques de medecine.
Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health CareInformation Needs and Information Seeking behaviour in Primary Health Care
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A questionnaire survey of 186 general practitioners in Sweden showed that 67% saw the overall supply of medical information as less satisfactory or unsatisfactory, and that 80% experienced major hindrances in seeking relevant information.
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Information resources for answering clinical questions should be readily available, familiar, and quick to use, and Lifelong learning activities should require a minimum of time, effort, and expense.
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Drug-prescribing textbooks were the most common type of book in family physicians' offices, followed by books on general internal medicine and adult infectious diseases, and those used to answer clinical questions were generally current.
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The medical specialist emerged as a critical gatekeeper in a study of information sources used by family practitioners in New Zealand and medical librarians seeking to improve the access of family practitioners to recent literature should consider the heavy use made of specialists as a source of information.
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The findings of two research projects, the Value and EVINCE projects, are compared with studies of the consolidation and application of clinical knowledge in clinical decision making to confirm the importance of personal clinical knowledge.
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25 Citations1997Josephine L. Dorsch, Victoria Pifalo
A retrospective study of document delivery requests made during the course of three outreach projects in west and central Illinois exemplifies a method for need-based journal collection development and begins to identify titles commonly requested in a rural health setting.
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21 Citations1995Frances Wood, Judith Palmer +3 more
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Drawing on the experience of one Practice Librarian in the Aylesbury area, the importance of organizational culture is considered, along with its implications for making successful approaches to partnerships.
PubMedMedical problem attributes and information-seeking questions.
11 Citations1996P. Zoē Stavri
While the taxonomy used to classify the questions did not prove rich enough to describe information needs fully, results did suggest some consistency in question asking, a skill that could be developed further during medical education.
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11 Citations1997Sue Lacey Bryant
It is demonstrated that an information professional can make a significant impact on the management of printed information whilst facilitating access to external sources.
PubMedInformation in general medical practice: a qualitative approach.
9 Citations1995Frances Wood, Diane M. Ellis +2 more
The main conclusion is that practices need to have an information strategy that considers human, manual, and computer aspects of information handling.
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ENLIGHTEN (Jurnal Bimbingan dan Konseling Islam)General Practitioners and Information: Evidence Based Practice Explored
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