Health information and libraries journal
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Doctors need information skills to deliver health care in the 21st century. There is concern that those who trained before the 'information age' will be inadequately equipped for their work. ⋯ Both junior and senior doctors have basic computer literacy, but nearly half of this population identify the use of database software as a training need. In addition, there are several health informatics topics of which a large proportion of doctors, particularly the juniors, have little knowledge, but which have not been identified as training needs. Some recommendations are made for provision of in-house health informatics education for doctors.
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For general practitioners (GPs), an important obstacle to practising evidence-based medicine is lack of time. An evidence-based answering service was developed that took over searching and appraisal of medical evidence from the GPs. GPs sent in questions, and the informationist formulated the answers. Our objectives were to find out if such an evidence-based answering service was feasible, including assessing the effect of the answers on GPs and their patients, as reported by the GPs. ⋯ This study indicates that an evidence-based answering service can have an impact on GPs and their patients. Librarians can provide an evidence-based answering service for GPs and their patients. The evidence-based answering service for GPs in this study had an impact on 81% of the GPs and on 52% of their patients. Although for one-third of the questions no evidence-based answer was found, this message in itself had an impact on 89% of the GPs. An informationist as mediator between medical information and doctors can save doctors' time.