Information Needs and Information Seeking Behaviors of Health Professionals

While the El Camino Hospital Health Library & Resource Center is open to both the general public, medical and health personnel, I have primarily observed nurses, doctors and medical personnel, and nursing students utilize the electronic and print resources on the days and times I visited the center. As a result of the clientele I have observed, I have chosen to focus on and discuss the information needs and information seeking behaviors of physicians and/or residents, and nurses and/or nurse practitioners.

Information Needs

Wilson “suggested that “information need” was not a fundamental need such as the need for shelter or the need for sustenance, but rather a secondary order need which arose out of the desire to satisfy the primary needs.”(Wilson, T.D. 2000). Wilson also suggests that “it may be preferable to refer to ‘information seeking towards the satisfaction of needs.’”  (Robson, Robinson, 2013). As I observed the various medical  professionals, nurses, and presumably nursing and medical students entering and sitting at the health resource center’s computers to search for information or prepare for tests, each of them had a need to satisfy, albeit cognitive, educational, and/or professional (seeking information on the best medical treatment of a patient).

In one literature review, nurses’ and physicians’ information needs have been defined as “expressions of missing information that is required to accomplish a specific task, which in this case is managing patient care.” (Clarke, 2013)

A number of studies conducted by various researchers have investigated the information needs of resident and attending physicians, nurses, nursing students, and nurse practitioners.

In a recent study conducted by Clarke regarding types of primary care physicians’ and nurses’ needs, several broad categories of needs were determined from 24 journal articles. Seventeen articles discussed information on diagnosis, 15 articles mentioned medications, 14 articles mentioned treatment, 10 articles mentioned prognosis, eight mentioned epidemiology, and seven articles mentioned etiology.

Surveys and questionnaires revealed that resident physicians and attending physicians had the same information needs; their most common being related to diagnosis. The nurses who were surveyed stated that they often seek information regarding protocols and procedures. The one similar information need shared among nurses and physicians was information regarding treatment for patients. What I found interesting, yet not surprising is that while these studies and articles were primarily based in the United States, physicians in other countries shared many of the same information needs such as accessible and timely delivered information sources that can enable nurses and physicians to provide the best patient care. (Clarke, Belden, Koopman, 2013).

Barriers to Information Seeking

Although the term “Information Overload” was not stated specifically by physicians as a barrier to information seeking and retrieval, this syndrome does tie in with time as one of the barriers to physicians’ and nurses’ effective information seeking. According to Bawden et al, “’Information Overload’ occurs when information received becomes more of a hindrance rather than a help when the information is potentially useful.” They further add that “information overload is the result of more information becoming available when new information technologies make this increasing amount of information available to end users.”(Clarke, 2013). When the “information overload” strikes when a health professional has limited time to find the information, the physician or nurse resorts to Zipf’s Principle of Least Effort–“It is human nature to want the greatest outcome for the least amount of work.” According to this principle, “each individual will adopt a course of Action that will involve the expenditure of the probable least average of his work—in other words, the least effort.”(Case, 2012­–Looking for Information). In the health professional’s situation, this can mean consulting with a colleague or a specialist with expertise in a particular field of medicine instead of spending inordinate amounts of time looking for information online or in the hospital library.

Geography in this study was also mentioned as a barrier, but due to time and word limits, this “barrier” may be discussed in future blogs or the term paper.

Information Seeking Behaviors

There are at least three definitions of Information Behavior that can be applied to Information Seeking in the medical care field and its various settings. According to Wilson, Information Behavior, itself, is defined as the “Totality of human behavior in relation to sources and channels of information.” This definition was very applicable to my observations of the medical/health personnel, and students who utilized the hospital’s health resource center. These users not only came to utilize the electronic and print resources available, they seemed to put their very beings into what they were seeking, studying, and learning. While they were always focused in what was on the computer screen, their bodies at times tended to change stance depending on what information they unexpectedly encountered while seeking or how they responded emotionally or cognitively to the information they were reading or learning.

Information Seeking Behavior is defined by Wilson as “purposive seeking of information as a consequence of a need to satisfy a goal.” The needs of physicians and nurses drive their “purposive seeking” of information to satisfy their goal(s) of providing the best treatment for their patients. According to the aforementioned study, health professionals “satisfy their information needs” by utilizing various resources such as specialized professional journals, medical textbooks, and online medical databases and websites to name a few.

Wilson defines “Information Use Behavior” as physical and mental acts involved in incorporating the information found into the person’s existing knowledge base. In addition to the changes in stance as in my observances, the physical entering of keywords and search terms is a vehicle for incorporating the accessed information into the person’s/healthcare professional’s existing knowledge base. The mental acts involve utilizing the existing or basic knowledge that a healthcare professional has about a particular disease or condition and also cognitively utilizes synonyms in alternate search queries to successfully and ultimately access needed information to satisfy their goal.

References

Case, D. O. Looking for Information, United Kingdom: Emerald Publishing Group, Ltd. (2012), p. 175.

Clarke, M. A., Belden, J. L., et. al. “Information-seeking behavior analysis of primary care physicians and nurses: a literature review” in Health Information and Libraries Journal, 30 (2013), p. 184.

Wilson, T. D. “Human Information Behavior” in Informing Science, 3 no. 2 (2000), p. 51.

Robson, A. and Robinson, L. “Building on models of information behavior: linking information seeking and communication” in Journal of Documentation, Emerald Group Publishing, Ltd., 69, No. 2 (2013), p. 179.

Zipf, G. K. “Human behavior and the principle of least effort” in Oxford, England: Addison-Wesley Press Human behavior and the principle of least effort. (1949). xi 573 pp.