The purpose of this dissertation was to describe the information needs and the information seeking behavior of rural physicians. The data were collected from a sample of twelve rural physicians in Central Florida from face-to-face interviews, and from observations of physicians' offices, the rural community, discussions with physicians' nurses, office personnel, and observations of hospital libraries when they existed. Multiple challenges face researchers attempting to interview rural physicians. / From a review of patient charts, 34% of the charts produced unique factual medical patient care questions. Seventy-five percent of the questions were on treatment, 14.7% on diagnosis, 8.3% on etiology, and 2.1% on the psychological aspects of disease. Rural physicians place similar emphasis on the use of information sources. All physicians rely on colleagues; 91.7% attend medical meetings; 75% subscribe to medical journals, and 75% own medical textbooks. Of the physicians with access to a hospital library that met certain criteria of eligibility imposed by the study, 16.7% use the library frequently and 50% never use the library. Physicians without access to a hospital library own more journals and textbooks than do those physicians with access to a hospital library; however, ownership is most likely due to individual differences rather than the existence of the library since half the physicians did not avail themselves of the opportunity to use the hospital library. / Lack of time due to long, hectic patient days and medical problems unique to rural practice were obstacles to information retrieval for patient care. Physicians need immediate access to high quality, synthesized answers to specific patient care questions at the time of patient contact. Information must be up-to-date, although not necessarily state-of-the-art. A database composed of concise, synthesized information, written by an honorary panel of physicians, designed to actually answer rural physicians' patient care questions would facilitate the information retrieval for rural physicians. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-12, Section: A, page: 3937. / Major Professor: Ronald Blazek. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78370 |
| Contributors | Dee, Cheryl Rae., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 276 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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