A taxonomy of generic clinical questions: classification study

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Clinical Practice Research
• Information Science

Background:

• Physicians frequently encounter clinical questions during patient care.
• Understanding the nature and frequency of these questions is crucial for improving medical information resources and clinical decision support.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a taxonomy of generic question types encountered by primary care physicians.
• To enhance the understanding of doctors' information needs in clinical practice.

Main Methods:

• A previously developed taxonomy was modified using 295 questions from Oregon primary care doctors.
• The revised taxonomy, comprising 64 generic question types, was applied to classify 1396 clinical questions.
• Interrater reliability was assessed among 11 coders classifying a sample of 100 questions.

Main Results:

• The three most common generic question types were 'What is the drug of choice for condition x?' (11%), 'What is the cause of symptom x?' (8%), and 'What test is indicated in situation x?' (8%).
• The revised taxonomy successfully classified 1396 clinical questions.
• Moderate interrater reliability (kappa=0.53) was achieved.

Conclusions:

• Clinical questions in primary care can be categorized into a finite set of generic types.
• The developed taxonomy demonstrates moderate interrater reliability and can aid in understanding and addressing physicians' information requirements.
• This taxonomy has the potential to improve the development and delivery of evidence-based information to clinicians.