Capturing clinical questions during medical residents' workflow

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Clinical Workflow Analysis
• Resident Education

Background:

• Identifying clinical questions is crucial for improving patient care and medical education.
• Current methods for capturing clinical questions during busy inpatient workflows are often inefficient.
• Latent information needs can go unaddressed in demanding clinical environments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the feasibility of using digital recorders to capture clinical questions from internal medicine residents during their inpatient workflow.
• To understand when and how residents naturally ask clinical questions in a hospital setting.
• To explore whether technology can unmask previously unrecognized information needs.

Main Methods:

• Five internal medicine residents were equipped with digital recorders to capture their clinical questions.
• Data collection focused on the context and timing of question recording within the daily workflow.
• Analysis included the sources consulted before questions were recorded.

Main Results:

• Most clinical questions were captured during the process of chart documentation.
• The availability of digital recorders appeared to encourage residents to generate more questions than usual.
• Questions were frequently documented after consulting accessible information resources like Epocrates.

Conclusions:

• Capturing clinical questions during routine inpatient workflow is a viable strategy.
• Digital recorders can be an effective tool for identifying and addressing latent information needs in busy hospital settings.
• This approach offers insights into resident learning and information-seeking behaviors.