Point-of-care Information Resources use by Clinicians in A Nigerian Tertiary Health Institution: A Non-Uniform Distribution

Abstract

Clinicians have been found to need more than mere primary information from sources such as MEDLINE and medical journal outlets. Information that will be useful for busy clinicians during patient care or at the bed side must be filtered for relevance, have labels for strength of recommendation and must be easily accessed. Point-of-care (POC) information resources belong here. However, their usage and distribution of use among clinicians in Nigeria have not been studied and the reason for this paper. Survey research was employed and questionnaire used to collect data from clinicians in a tertiary health institution in Southwest Nigeria on their use of fifteen selected POC information resources. The study found that while the doctors mostly (68.57%) use search engines such as Google to meet their POC information needs, very few (17.14%) will however use POC information resources. On their usage of POC information resources, the study found that eMedicine (14.29%) and 5-minute Clinical Consult (14.29%) and Clinical Evidence (11.43%) were mostly used on daily basis where eMedicine (17.14%), Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews (11.43%) and Clinical Evidence (8.57%) were the ones used more on weekly basis. On the overall use average, the study found that eMedicine (21.91%), BMJ's Clinical Evidence (16.19%), and Clinical pharmacology-Elsevier (13.33%) and Cochrane Library (10.47%) were the mostly used POC information resources by clinicians in the tertiary health institution. However, the test of hypothesis on how users are distributed on POC information resources in the hospital shows a non-uniform distribution. Recommendations were made based on these findings.