title: Access to and value of information to support good practice for staff in Kenyan hospitals.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Studies have sought to define information needs of health workers within very specific settings or projects. Lacking in the literature is how hospitals in low-income settings are able to meet the information needs of their staff and the use of information communication technologies (ICT) in day-to-day information searching.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The study aimed to explore where professionals in Kenyan hospitals turn to for work-related information in their day-to-day work. Additionally, it examined what existing solutions are provided by hospitals with regard to provision of best practice care. Lastly, the study explored the use of ICT in information searching.
  
  
  METHODS
  Data for this study were collected in July 2012. Self-administered questionnaires (SAQs) were distributed across 22 study hospitals with an aim to get a response from 34 health workers per hospital.
  
  
  RESULTS
  SAQs were collected from 657 health workers. The most popular sources of information to guide work were fellow health workers and printed guidelines while the least popular were scientific journals. Of value to health workers were: national treatment policies, new research findings, regular reports from surveillance data, information on costs of services and information on their performance of routine clinical tasks; however, hospitals only partially met these needs. Barriers to accessing information sources included: 'not available/difficult to get' and 'difficult to understand'. ICT use for information seeking was reported and with demographic specific differences noted from the multivariate logistic regression model; nurses compared to medical doctors and older workers were less likely to use ICT for health information searching. Barriers to accessing Internet were identified as: high costs and the lack of the service at home or at work.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Hospitals need to provide appropriate information by improving information dissemination efforts and providing an enabling environment that allows health workers find the information they need for best practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Research, KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Nairobi, Kenya; nmuinga@kemri-wellcome.org.
authors.forename: Naomi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Muinga
authors.affiliation: Information School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Sen
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Research, KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Nairobi, Kenya.
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ayieko
authors.affiliation: Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Todd
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Research, KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Nairobi, Kenya.|Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.|Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: English
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D035843:Biomedical Research; D040421:Cell Phone; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006302:Health Services Research; D006779:Hospitals, Public / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination / Q000379:methods*; D020407:Internet; D007630:Kenya; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010564:Personnel, Hospital; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic
keywords: ICT; health information; information needs of health workers; information seeking; information sources