Information use and clinical practice by resident physicians

This paper describes the study of information requirements and use of information by resident physicians in clinical practice. It contextualizes the study undertaken at UFSC University Hospital of resident physicians and outlines the information requirements in clinical practice by the resident physicians in the hospital. It then maps the process of choosing the information sources to be used and shows those most widely used. The results suggest that: in the course of their work resident physicians are faced with issues classified as foreground issues which are more connected with the clinical aspects of patient treatment, to the detriment of issues connected with basic aspects such as epidemiology and etiology; for their main sources of information they use periodicals, textbooks and handbooks, guidelines and other manuals in an almost equal way; the internet was the most used method for information searches; within those information systems the most used were: UptoDate, the CAPES journal portal and PubMed/Medline. These results suggest that the resident physicians are aware of the importance of information use for more efficient clinical practice.