Physicians' Internet activities and their perceived coping with the medical information

To describe and analyze physicians' Internet activities and how this relates to their coping with medical information.

Postal survey among 1276 Norwegian physicians (response rate 78%).

Seventy-two percent of all physicians had access to the Internet in 1999, up from 38% in 1997. One out of two physicians use the Internet for professional purposes. Web-based search is the dominant activity and Internet use is closely related to other ways of information-seeking (reading and attending professional meetings). A total of 70% of the respondents reported ability to obtain sufficient information for keeping updated in their daily work. "Internet-active"-physicians reported a higher rate of such ability than physicians without Internet access (74% vs 65%).

The Internet plays an increasingly important role in physicians' professional updating. The impact of new information technology on the medical community should be carefully monitored in the future.