Patient information needs: pre- and post-consultation

2005

ABSTRACT This paper details findings from a study of information seeking by National Health Service patients which explored motivational triggers for information needs. Previous research has highlighted the importance of contextual elements in users changing information needs. This paper highlights how those needs may center on specific real world events and in particular a patient's consultation with their doctor.

Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, 1989

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.

Health Information and Libraries Journal, 2005

Background: The scope of primary care makes knowledge management in this context very challenging, especially as access to information increases and the role of primary care within the NHS expands.Objectives: This paper reviews the literature on the information needs of primary care clinicians to enable evidence-based decision making. Drawing on the literature, and using a specific example of a clinical informaticist service, some lessons are drawn on the role of information professionals in facilitating evidence-based health care.Methods: Literature review. Case study of clinical informaticist service.Conclusions: There are numerous barriers to clinicians engaging with evidence-based practice. However, providing evidence-based information to clinicians’ questions in a user-friendly format has the potential to facilitate changes in practice. The successful implementation of information services requires attention to both academic and service dimensions, fostering closer working relationships between clinicians and information professionals.

Danish medical journal, 2014

The aim of the study was to describe how often patients seek information about their disease in connection with contact to a hospital and to elucidate how information-seeking behaviour is related to the patients' perception of this contact. The study was based on patient surveys from the Danish county of Aarhus from 1999 to 2006 including eight public hospitals. The patients' information-seeking behaviour was related to patient characteristics, organisational context and patient perceptions. Among the 75,769 patients who responded, 33.4% had actively sought information. The frequency of patients seeking information increased from 24.4% in 1999 to 38.3% in 2006 with a variation between organisational units ranging from 7.7% to 81.8%. The share of critical patients among those who actively sought information was 23.7% in 1999 and 18.1% in 2006 compared with 12.9% and 11.3% critical patients, respectively, among those who did not. Having sought information correlated with negat...

Qualitative Health Research, 2007

Seeking information about one's health is increasingly documented as a key coping strategy in health-promotive activities and psychosocial adjustment to illness. In this article, the authors critically examine the scientific literature from 1982 to 2006 on the concept of health information-seeking behavior (HISB) to determine its level of maturity and clarify the concept's essential characteristics. A principle-based method of concept analysis provides the framework for exploring the nature of HISB. The authors reviewed approximately 100 published articles and five books reporting on HISB. Although HISB is a popular concept used in various contexts, most HISB definitions provide little insight into the concept's specific meanings. The authors describe the concept's characteristics, contributing to a clearer understanding of HISB, and discuss operationalizations, antecedents, and outcomes of HISB. Such an analysis of HISB might guide further theorizing on this highly relevant concept and assist health care providers in designing optimal informational interventions.

Health Information & Libraries Journal, 2013

This article provides a review of the information needs and information seeking patterns of the rural farmers in selected districts of Tanzania. Focus group data was triangulated with interview data in order to validate, confirm and corroborate quantitative results with qualitative findings. The findings revealed that the information needs and information seeking patterns of farmers were location and gender specific to a certain extent. Farmers relied on interpersonal and face to face communication more than explicit sources of information. Constraints on information access included internal (personal) and external barriers (unavailability of the extension officers, distant locations for consultations with public extension officers, poor responses to information requests from the government and village leaders, lack of awareness of the available information sources, inability of some experts to solve problems, and Lwoga, Ngulube and Stilwell : Information needs and information …. 83

Protocols, 1996

electronic Journal of Health Informatics, 2008

Healthcare organisations are increasingly developing and deploying Health Information Systems that target healthcare consumers. To ensure effective and engaging Health Information Systems requires identifying the potential information needs of these consumers. However a comprehensive systematic understanding of their information needs is lacking. This paper proposes a conceptual framework based on Luft and Ingham's Johari window that can be used to identify, organise and abstract potential information needs of these consumers. The conceptual framework illustrates four abstract groups of information needs: recognised demanded, unrecognised demanded, recognised undemanded, and unrecognised undemanded. The paper highlights the potential usefulness of the framework for information providers and systems designers.

2013

Primary health care practitioners routinely search for information within electronic knowledge resources. We proposed four levels of outcomes of informationseeking: situational relevance, cognitive impact, information use, and patient health outcomes. Our objective was to produce clinical vignettes for describing and testing these levels. We conducted a mixed methods study combining a quantitative longitudinal study and a qualitative multiple case study. Participants were 10 nurses, 10 medical residents, and 10 pharmacists. They had access to an online resource, and did 793 searches for treatment recommendations. Using the Information Assessment Method (IAM), participants rated their searches for each of the four levels. Rated searches were examined in interviews guided by log reports and a think-aloud protocol. Cases were defined as clearly described searches where clinical information was used for a specific patient. For each case, interviewees described the four levels of outcomes. Quantitative and qualitative data were merged into clinical vignettes. We produced 130 clinical vignettes. Specifically, 46 vignettes (35.4%) corresponded to clinical situations where information use was associated with one or more than one type of positive patient health outcome: increased patient knowledge (n = 28), avoidance of unnecessary or inappropriate intervention (n = 25), prevention of disease or health deterioration (n = 9), health improvement (n = 6), and increased patient satisfaction (n = 3). Results suggested information use was associated with perceived benefits for patients. This may encourage clinicians to search for information more often when they feel the need. Results supported the four proposed levels of outcomes, which can be transferable to other information-seeking contexts.

Summary Background The term information behaviour covers the range of activities from awareness of a need for information or evidence to inform decision-making, through to the activities of searching, collecting, evaluating and using such information. It also includes the role that information intermediaries (knowledge managers, librarians) play in such processes. It is widely accepted that managers will make better decisions if their decision making process is based on good quality information. However, although the concept of evidence based practice is well established in relation to clinical practice, what little research there is suggests that health managers largely rely on experience and intuition. While there are studies of clinical professionals, health services managers’ information behaviour has not been investigated systematically. This project contributes to improved knowledge and thus provides grounding for better practice. The study concerned anyone who has managerial ...