title: Features of effective medical knowledge resources to support point of care learning: a focus group study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Health care professionals access various information sources to quickly answer questions that arise in clinical practice. The features that favorably influence the selection and use of knowledge resources remain unclear. We sought to better understand how clinicians select among the various knowledge resources available to them, and from this to derive a model for an effective knowledge resource.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted 11 focus groups at an academic medical center and outlying community sites. We included a purposive sample of 50 primary care and subspecialist internal medicine and family medicine physicians. We transcribed focus group discussions and analyzed these using a constant comparative approach to inductively identify features that influence the selection of knowledge resources.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We identified nine features that influence users' selection of knowledge resources, namely efficiency (with sub-features of comprehensiveness, searchability, and brevity), integration with clinical workflow, credibility, user familiarity, capacity to identify a human expert, reflection of local care processes, optimization for the clinical question (e.g., diagnosis, treatment options, drug side effect), currency, and ability to support patient education. No single existing resource exemplifies all of these features.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The influential features identified in this study will inform the development of knowledge resources, and could serve as a framework for future research in this field.
authors.affiliation: Office of Education Research, Mayo Medical School, Rochester, Minnesota, United States of America ; Division of General Internal Medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, Minnesota, United States of America ; Knowledge Delivery Center, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, United States of America.
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Cook
authors.forename: Kristi J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Sorensen
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hersh
authors.forename: Richard A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Berger
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Wilkinson
mesh_terms: D000046:Academic Medical Centers; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000379:methods*; D017144:Focus Groups; D006801:Humans; D007254:Information Science / Q000379:methods; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000193:education; D019359:Knowledge; D010820:Physicians; D019095:Point-of-Care Systems; D011320:Primary Health Care