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[Paper or screen, mother tongue or English--which is better?]
Pål Gulbrandsen1, Torben V Schroeder, Josef Milerad
1Tidsskrift for Den norske laegeforening Postboks 1152 Sentrum 0107 Oslo. palgul@heltef.no
Background:
The trends in medical publishing are towards electronic versions and the use of the English language. The objective of this study was to compare general practitioners' ability to retain information when reading on paper versus on screen, and in their mother tongue versus in the English.
Material And Methods:
Randomized controlled trial of 114 Scandinavian general practitioners. They read a review article for 10 minutes either on paper/in English, on screen/in English, on paper/in their mother tongue, or on screen/in their mother tongue. Afterwards they completed a questionnaire with six open questions from the article. The main outcome measure was sum score on a scale from 0 (no correct answers) to 13 (all questions answered correctly).
Results:
We found no difference between readers of paper and screen versions (median (interquartile range) 4 (2-6) vs. 4 (2-5), p = 0.97). Those who read their mother tongue scored significantly higher than those who read English (4 (3-6) vs. 3 (2-4), p = 0.01).
Interpretation:
The medium (paper vs. screen) does not influence the ability of general practitioners to retain medical information. Doctors best retain medical information when reading it in their mother tongue.