Received 11 March 2007; received in revised form 23 March 2007; accepted 24 March 2007.
Abstract
Objectives
The objective of the study was to determine how many patient-related questions emergency medicine physicians have and how they answer them at the point of care.
Methods
We conducted an observational study of 26 physicians at 2 institutions. All physicians were followed for at least 2 shifts. The number and type of questions were recorded. The percentage answered, resources used, and barriers to answering questions were also recorded.
Results
Physicians had 235 questions or approximately 5 questions per 8-hour shift . They attempted to answer 81% of them and were successful 87% of the time. The 2 most commonly used information sources were drug information resources (Personal digital assistant [PDA], pocket pharmacopeia [37% of the time]) followed by electronic resources (Google, UpToDate [29% of the time]). The most common reason for not pursuing a question was lack of time and distractions or interruptions, followed by a belief that an answer would not be found. When an answer was not found to a pursued question, non–emergency department physicians were the most common resource consulted (28%).
Conclusions
Emergency department physicians in this study pursued and found answers for most questions posed at the point of care. Rapid access to electronic resources and drug-prescribing references were critical for answering questions at the point of care.
aDepartment of Emergency Medicine, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA
bDepartment of Family Medicine, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA
Corresponding author. Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. Tel.: +1 319 356 2233.
1 Mark A. Graber helped to design the study, analyze the data, and had primary responsibility for project oversight and writing the article.
2 Bradley D. Randles helped to design the study, collect the data, and write the article.
3 John W. Ely helped to design the study, write the article, and helped with study oversight.
4 Jay Monnahan helped to collect the data and write the article.
ABSTRACT