Attitudes and experience of Dutch general practitioners regarding computerized clinical decision support

Dutch general practices have a high adoption rate for computerized patient records and clinical decision support. We sought to measure the attitudes and experience of Dutch general practitioners towards clinical decision support.

A preliminary survey was created based on questions from published surveys, modified with the results of interviews. The final web-based survey was administered to 43 general practitioners in a practice area where a decision support implementation is planned.

Thirty general practitioners (70%) completed the survey. Most felt that decision support is a good idea (23/30), although fewer reported positive experience with decision support (10/30). Participants were supportive of rules and guidelines, but commonly had the sense that there were too many alerts.

Dutch clinicians are positive about decision support, but future efforts should try to reduce the perception of overload, for example by ensuring that alerts are relevant and choosing less interruptive forms of notification for less severe alerts.