Analysis of questions asked by family doctors regarding patient care

EDITOR--John et al have reported good evidence which have
representative sample and excellent and systematic approach to the family
physicians' information needs1. We also conducted similar small
observational study at the university-affiliated teaching
family practice center in Japan, and try to compare our result to theirs.

During December 1996, all outpatient encounters were recorded.
Participants were all family physicians (6 residents, 4 staffs) in the
center, mean age of them was 29 (range 26-33). After finishing all
consultations, we had a outpatient-conference everyday. Researcher asked
the physician, "Do you have any questions about this patient ?",tape-recorded and transcribed them into textwords, and divided into 5-
categories (1:on particular patients, 2:data on public health, 3:medical
knowledge, 4:local information on doctors, 5:information on practice
management)2.

One month later since questions occurred, all physicians were
interviewed by researcher whether they tried to seek answers or not and
what kinds of resources they used. The 10 participants saw 392 patients
and asked 71 questions during one month. And answers to 31(44%) of
questions were not intended to pursue. The most generic questions were
medical knowledge (61(88%)). In which detail of the medical knowledge was
mainly about therapy (40%) and diagnosis (15%). Doctors used mostly
printed (45%) and human(45%) resources. Medline seaches were used only 10%. We didn't measure the time spent pursuing each answers.

Despite the
differences on the setting, healthcare system, physicians' career and
data-collecting method, the results were almost similar.

1 John WE, Jerome AO, Mark HE, George RB, Barcey TL. Analysis of
questions asked by family doctors regarding patient care .BMJ 1999;319:358
-361. ( 7 August. )

2 Smith R.What clinical information do doctors need? BMJ1996;313:1062-8