Computer resources help doctors answer patient care...( You bring questions to your physician ...),Health

You bring questions to your physician, but if your doctor has questions about how to best provide care for you, where does he or she go for answers? Physicians still use paper-based resources, however, a University of Iowa Health Care study focused on pediatricians shows that, in comparison, it takes less than one-third of the time to use the computer to find an answer.

The study, which also shows the effectiveness of training physicians to use computer resources for patient care questions, appears in the January 2004 issue of the journal Pediatrics. A related study on pediatricians' most common types of clinical questions appears in the January 2004 issue of the journal Ambulatory Pediatrics. That study shows resources should better take into account the types of questions doctors have about their young patients. The two studies were based on the participation of faculty and resident pediatricians at Children's Hospital of Iowa.

"There has been little research on how physicians seek answers to clinical care questions and, of that, virtually nothing focuses on pediatricians," said Donna D'Alessandro, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.

"We tried to characterize what pediatricians did when they had questions and also what those questions were. The underlying goal is ultimately to make different information resources available," she said. "If we can develop better resources for physicians to use when they have questions, then hopefully we can improve patient care."

Previous studies show that roughly one patient care question per physician goes unanswered in any given day, and the most common reason is lack of time. In addition, resources either are not available, not up-to-date, or do not provide information in a way that answers the specific question about a specific patient.

The study published in Pediatrics focused on types of resources -- paper-based or
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Contact: Becky Soglin
becky-soglin@uiowa.edu
319-335-6660
University of Iowa
21-Jan-2004

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