Use of traditional versus electronic medical-information resources by residents and interns

Little is known about the information-seeking behaviour of junior doctors, with regard to their use of traditional versus electronic sources of information.

To evaluate the amount of time junior doctors spent using various medical-information resources and how useful they perceived these resources to be.

A questionnaire study of all residents and interns in a tertiary teaching hospital in July and August 2004.

In total, 134 doctors returned the completed questionnaires (response rate 79.8%). They spent the most time using traditional resources like teaching sessions and print textbooks, rating them as most useful. However, electronic resources like MEDLINE, UpToDate, and online review articles also ranked highly. Original research articles were less popular.

Residents and interns prefer traditional sources of medical information. Meanwhile, though some electronic resources are rated highly, more work is required to remove the barriers to evidence-based medicine.