title: Australian health professionals' health website recommendation trends.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  This study was concerned with indentifying motivations and trends associated with a health website recommendation from eight of Australia's major health professions to the health consumer. Health professions included in this study are: psychiatrists, general practitioners, social workers, dietitians, chiropractors, physiotherapists, optometrists and pharmacists.
  
  
  METHODS
  An online survey (www.limesurvey.org) was developed from a common set of questions negotiated between all eight health professions. Survey questions were constructed in an attempt to identify participants' reasons for or against recommending a health website to a patient. A 5-point scale (not, slightly, neutral, moderately, strongly) to measure influence was used throughout the question set.
  
  
  RESULTS
  This study indicates that Australian general practitioners (GPs) were the highest Australian health professionals to undertake a health website recommendation (86%), followed by psychiatrists (80%), with the lowest being physiotherapists (42%) and optometrists (33%). A profile of the Australian health professional who recommends a health website is identified as male, aged above 50 years, has had more than 10 years experience, works in a major city, is in private practice and has patient numbers exceeding 500 in a 12-month period (2009).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Recommendations from this study include the need to develop mechanisms that identify high-quality online medical information and the development and implementation of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses which up-skill health professionals concerning the recommendation of health websites for health care delivery.
authors.affiliation: Education, Griffith University, Queensland. w.usher@riffith.edu.au
authors.forename: Wayne T
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Usher
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001315:Australia; D005260:Female; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000379:methods*; D020407:Internet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009862:Online Systems / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D015203:Reproducibility of Results