Physicians' patterns of using a computerized collection of guidelines for primary care.
Physician's Desk Reference and Database is a Finnish collection of computerized primary care guidelines. The program has been in clinical use since 1989. For this study, a function producing a log file of all searches was added to the program. Two hundred twenty-seven users returned log files that contained 15,267 searches. The users made 3.12 (range 1-10.4) searches per day. The average time needed to find and read an article was 4.9 minutes. Sufficient facts were found in 71% of the searches. Dermatology was the most popular field of interest, followed by infectious diseases and cardiology.
Jousimaa
J
J
University of Kuopio.
Kunnamo
I
I
Mäkelä
M
M
D000328:Adult; D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland; D019983:Guideline Adherence; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D007255:Information Services; D008297:Male; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires