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Annals of Family Medicine 5:345-352 (2007)
© 2007 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.
doi: 10.1370/afm.681
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Information Needs and Information-Seeking Behavior of Primary Care Physicians

Ana I. González-González, MD1, Martin Dawes, MBBS, DRCOG, MD2, José Sánchez-Mateos, MD1, Rosario Riesgo-Fuertes, MD1, Esperanza Escortell-Mayor, MD1, Teresa Sanz-Cuesta, MD1 and Tomás Hernández-Fernández, MD1

1 Servicio Madrileño de la Salud, Madrid, Spain
2 Family Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Ana I. González-González, MD, Gerencia Atención Primaria Área, 10 de Madrid, Avda Juan de la Cierva s/n, 28902 Getafe, Madrid, Spain, agonzalez.gapm10{at}salud.madrid.org

PURPOSE The aim of this study was to determine the information needs of primary care physicians in Spain and to describe their information-seeking patterns.

METHODS This observational study took place in primary care practices located in Madrid, Spain. Participants were a random stratified sample of 112 primary care physicians. Physicians’ consultations were video recorded for 4 hours. Clinical questions arising during the patient visit and the sources of information used within the consultation to answer questions were identified. Physicians with unanswered questions were followed up by telephone 2 weeks later to determine whether their questions had since been answered and the sources of information used. Clinical questions were classified by topic and type of information.

RESULTS A total of 3,511 patient consultations (mean length, 7.8 minutes) were recorded, leading to 635 clinical questions (0.18 questions per consultation). The most frequent questions were related to diagnosis (53%) and treatment (26%). The most frequent generic type of questions was "What is the cause of symptom x?" (20.5%). Physicians searched for answers to 22.8% of the questions (9.6% during consultations). The time taken and the success rate in finding an answer during a consultation and afterward were 2 minutes (100%) and 32 minutes (75%), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS Primary care physicians working in settings where consultations are of short duration have time to answer only 1 in 5 of their questions. Better methods are needed to provide answers to questions that arise in office practice in settings where average consultation time is less than 10 minutes.

Key Words: Information seeking • clinical questions • knowledge translation • primary health care • medical informatics • information systems • information resources • office visits




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In This Issue: Clinical Diagnosis and Management
Ann. Fam. Med, July 1, 2007; 5(4): 290 - 291.
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