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Patient-care questions that physicians are unable to answer
John W Ely1, Jerome A Osheroff, Saverio M Maviglia
1Department of Family Medicine, 01291-D PFP, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, 200 Hawkins Drive, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA. john-ely@uiowa.edu
Summary
Physicians struggle to answer over 40% of clinical questions. Rephrasing search queries and using clinical resources can improve finding answers to undiagnosed findings, conditional, and compound questions.
Area of Science:
- Medical Informatics
- Clinical Practice Research
Background:
- Primary care physicians frequently encounter clinical questions during patient encounters.
- A significant proportion of these questions remain unanswered despite physician efforts to find information.
Purpose of the Study:
- To characterize the types of unanswered clinical questions encountered by physicians.
- To propose interventions to enhance the success rate of finding answers to clinical questions.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of previously recorded unanswered clinical questions from primary care physicians.
- Categorization of unanswered questions into generic types.
- Development of recommendations for improving information retrieval.
Main Results:
- Physicians could not find answers to 41% of the questions they pursued.
- The most common types of unanswered questions were 'Undiagnosed finding', 'Conditional', and 'Compound' questions.
- Strategies for improving clinical information retrieval were identified.
Conclusions:
- Physicians should refine their search strategies by rephrasing questions and utilizing clinically focused resources.
- Creators of clinical information resources should anticipate practice-based questions.
- Clinical information systems need to offer clearer, more direct answers.
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