Information-seeking Skills Research Articles

The Relationship of Information Exchange During Medical Visits to Patient Satisfaction: A Review

Being able to receive and pro vide information during medical visits affects patient satisfaction with care more than any socio- demographic characteristic of patients. However, studies reveal little patient participation in information exchange during medical interactions, as well as a perception that little informa tion is provided by practitioners. The research in this field is reviewed, and efforts to increase patients' information-seeking skills are discussed.

The way we teach information-seeking skills.

A problem-based approach has been introduced as part of a surgery clerkship, to teach medical students information-seeking skills.Students are given an assignment before an information search seminar, to work independently to resolve one of two patient problems and in the process record each step of their information seeking. Students answer questions about the patient's management on a card before the seminar. During the seminar the students report their competence on using medical information sources and are able to assess their own efficacy in comparison to an expert information seeker. Students have responded favourably to the seminars.

A study of the information-seeking skills of medical students and physician faculty.

In the research reported here, the authors compared (a) the abilities of third- and fourth-year students and physicians to solve problems requiring review of current literature with (b) the information-seeking procedures of the three groups in researching those problems. The subjects were given a patient care question to answer, and logs were maintained to document their information-seeking processes. The findings indicated no differences among the three groups in accurately solving patient care problems; a difference in information-seeking processes between third-year students and physicians; and no differences between third-year and fourth-year students or between physicians and fourth-year students in their approaches to seeking information. Mean scores indicated that all three groups need additional training on accessing the literature in making patient care decisions.

The design of a dynamic book for information search

Information-seeking skills are central to many learning tasks, from finding simple facts and comparing events in an encyclopedia, to pursuing complex research questions. Electronic document/database systems are touted as alternatives to piles of paper for accessing information, yet our current understanding of how people search for information provides few clues about how to improve the design of such systems. Dynamic books are a powerful electronic transformation of information that could potentially offer multiple paths through complex information and help us actively in searching. Within this context, this paper explores how people look for information and how the design of dynamic books interacts with the search process. It also describes a simple dynamic book, based on a world history textbook, implemented in the Smalltalk programming system, and used by students to answer questions.