Background: Many physicians encounter clinical questions in their practice. However, many of these questions are left unanswered due to various reasons. Objective: The study aimed to determine the information needs and information-seeking behavior among resident physicians in a tertiary hospital in Iloilo City. Methods: The study used a cross-sectional study design. The fifty-seven resident physicians of the different residency training programs of Iloilo Mission Hospital answered a twenty-minute self-administered questionnaire on May 2019. Data entry, descriptive statistics, and correlational analysis were done using Microsoft Excel version 1905 and SPSS version 26. Pearson chi square and Gamma tests at alpha level 0.05 were used to assess the association between variables. Results: Majority (80.7%) of resident physicians needed access to health information resource to answer their daily clinical queries. Respondents have an average of 4.7 questions per patient per meeting. They successfully answered 60.9% of questions encountered. Their preferred information resources were fellow residents, online journals, Medscape, consultants, and Google. The top three barriers to information seeking are lack of time, forgetting the question, and difficulty in finding answers in selected health resource. All respondents exhibit a positive attitude towards pursuing evidence-based answers. There is no relationship between age, gender, specialty, and attitude towards pursuing answers. Conclusions The resident physicians of Iloilo Mission Hospital pursued and answered 60.9 % of questions encountered in clinical practice. The respondents believed that using health information resources can improve patient care and update one’s medical knowledge.
Information Seeking Behavior ; Information Sources

BACKGROUND: Before the COVID-19 vaccine became available, many Japanese people were undecided about whether or not to receive them. Their decisions were keys to achieving herd immunity. The impact of the type of information source on the COVID-19 vaccine uptake decision-making process remains unclear. We aimed to investigate the association between information source usage on COVID-19 and subsequent vaccine uptake status among those who have yet to decide whether to receive vaccines from non-prioritized people for vaccination. METHODS: Prospective cohort online self-administered surveys were conducted in February 2021 (T1), before the start of the mass vaccination program, and September-October 2021 (T2), when the vaccines were available to all citizens. The survey's target population was registered monitors of an Internet research company. Participants who answered "I want to get vaccinated after waiting to see how it goes." at T1 were eligible for analysis. The outcome variable was the COVID-19 vaccine uptake status in T2, and the predictors were 20 types of information sources, categorized based on people (family members, etc.), institutions (governments, etc.), or media (TV news, etc.). Adjusted odds ratio and 95% confidence intervals were estimated using logistic regression adjusted for possible confounders. RESULTS: The 5,139 respondents, mean age and standard deviation was 42.8 ± 12.5, 55.7% female, were eligible for analysis. 85.7% completed vaccination (including reserved/intended people) in T2. In the multivariate logistic analysis, odds ratios (95% confidence interval) for vaccine uptake were 1.49 (1.18-1.89) for workplaces/schools, 1.81 (1.33-2.47) for LINE, 0.69 (0.55-0.86) for Internet news and 0.62 (0.48-0.82) for video sharing sites. CONCLUSIONS The type of information source usage played an important role in the decision to vaccinate against COVID-19. Although caution is needed in interpreting the results, obtaining information from workplaces/schools and LINE was influential in promoting immunization.
Humans ; Female ; Male ; Information Sources ; COVID-19 Vaccines ; Prospective Studies ; Intention ; Japan ; COVID-19/prevention & control* ; Vaccination