Dear HIFA colleagues,
Below are the citation and abstract of a paper in the journal Information Development. Unfortunately the full text is behind a paywall so most of us are unable to read it. (In my experience, research on library and information science seems to be - paradoxically - less likely to be freely available than other research. What is your experience?)
CITATION: Information needs, sources and seeking behaviour of physicians and residents during clinical decision-making and patient care process: A qualitative study
Information Development 2023
Halimeh Sadeghi, Mohsen Nowkarizi
https://doi.org/10.1177/02666669231166006
ABSTRACT
The aim of the present study was to investigate the information needs of physicians and residents during the clinical decision-making. The research has been performed with phenomenological approach and using semi-structured interview based on critical incident technique with 28 physicians and residents of the educational health care centers of Birjand city South Khorasan province, Iran. The results showed that the information needs of physicians and residents were mostly related to diseases, diagnosis, prescription, treatment, disease follow-up, learning and self-updating, education and research. The information sources utilized were categorized into three main themes of human sources, electronic sources and print sources. The barriers against their information seeking were personal, organizational, technological, skill related, nature of information seeking, and barriers related to information sources. The present study provides a clear picture of the information needs, the information resources and the barriers to finding information for physicians and residents, therefore, the results of the present study can help medical libraries to improve their collection of resources and services to support the information needs of physicians and residents. It also paves the way for designers of information systems in creating systems that suit the needs of physicians in every stage of clinical decision-making and helps libraries in solving the challenges of finding information for physicians.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
