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Evidence based practice
Original research
What information sources do Dutch medical specialists use in medical decision-making: a qualitative interview study
  1. Floris S. Weller1,2,
  2. Jaap F. Hamming1,
  3. Sjoerd Repping3,
  4. Leti van Bodegom-Vos2
  1. 1Department of Surgery, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands
  2. 2Basic Data Siences-Medical Decision Making, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands
  3. 3Department of Health Evaluation and Appropriate Use, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  1. Correspondence to Floris S. Weller; f.s.weller{at}lumc.nl

Abstract

Objective To explore what information sources medical specialists currently use to inform their medical decision-making.

Design Qualitative, semistructured interviews.

Setting and participants A total of 20 semistructured interviews were conducted with 10 surgeons and 10 internal medicine specialists who work in academic and/or regional hospitals in the Netherlands.

Results Medical specialists reported that they primarily rely on their general knowledge and experience, rather than actively using information sources. The sources they use to update their knowledge can be categorised into ‘scientific publications’, ‘guidelines or protocols’, and ‘presentations and meetings’. When medical specialists feel their general knowledge and experience are insufficient, they use three different approaches to find answers in response to clinical questions: consulting a colleague, actively searching the literature and asking someone else to search the literature.

Conclusion Medical specialists use information sources to update their general knowledge and to find answers to specific clinical questions when they feel their general knowledge and experience are insufficient. An important finding is that medical specialists prefer accessible information sources (eg, consulting colleagues) over existing evidence-based medicine tools.

  • information management
  • clinical decision-making
  • clinical reasoning
  • qualitative research
  • education & training (see medical education & training)

Data availability statement

Data are available upon reasonable request.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2023-073905

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    Data availability statement

    Data are available upon reasonable request.

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors FW wrote the ethical committee protocol, conducted interviews, performed the qualitative analysis and wrote the manuscript and acts as guarantor. JH, SR and LvB-V wrote the grant proposal, were present at project team meetings to discuss the developments of this study, corrected and added suggestions to the final manuscript.

    • Funding This work was supported by the Academic Working Place ‘Care Practice and Policy’ of the Consortium Quality of Care of the Netherlands Federation of University Medical Centers (NFU), and National Health Care Institute under grant number 21556.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.