UK doctors awareness and use of specified electronic evidence-based medicine resources

Abstract

There is an increasing emphasis placed on evidence-based medicine, and the use of relevant resources. The aim of this study is to evaluate UK doctor's awareness and use of specified evidence-based medicine (EBM) electronic resources. Respondents were invited to complete an online questionnaire and 636 were completed. The most frequently used EBM resources available via the National Library for Health were the most established and well-known resources, namely, Medline/PubMed. The top three resources not freely available via the National Library for Health were general non-specialist specific resources. Over three-quarters of the respondents had not heard of the American resources and resources that had only ever been electronic were not widely known or used by the respondents. The introduction of new electronic resources to doctors must involve more than simply promoting the URL/web location. In fact, the development of a comprehensive list of resources highlighting their strengths (and weaknesses) may be beneficial for busy doctors.

Keywords:

• Evidence-based medicine
• medical staff
• electronic resources
• UK

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the paper.