INFORMATION SEEKING IN PRIMARY CARE: A SURVEY OF DOCTORS WORKING IN REMOTE GOVERNMENT HEALTH FACILITIES IN PAKISTAN

Introduction:The role of information seeking has always played a very significant part in all kinds of jobs performed by doctors, whether it is treatment of a patient or overall management of the hospital. According to Vakkari (1999) information seeking is a process of searching, obtaining and using information for a purpose. According to Thompson (1997) doctor's collected information which takes the shape of their knowledge is not always adequate to answer all medical questions at the time of patient treatment. It seems that most of the time doctors concentrate on their own knowledge which they acquired over the time period of years for making critical clinical decisions. According to Smith (1996) most of the clinical information doctor's apply while examining the patients is acquired from their memory and unfortunately some of it is out of date or wrong. Therefore, it is necessary for doctors to seek and keep abreast with the current clinical information to provide a better patient care.Literature Review:According to Bates (2006) importance of information cannot be argued in any field. He explained application of the term 'information' in library and information science by giving various examples i.e. the study of information seeking behavior tend to incorporate an awareness of all the kinds of information a person seeks. "People get information not just from paper sources, not just from other people, but also from the physical layout of their workspaces, from the design, not just the content, of informational genres, and above all, from the interaction of these various factors in a real situation. Information behavior is a sub-discipline in the discipline of library and information science. It explains "how people need, seek, manage, give and use information in different contexts" (Savolainen, 2007). It may also be described as information seeking behavior or human information behavior. Information behavior (IB) is a widely recognized term used to explain the ways, in which people seek and use information. It explains how human beings interact with information. The term 'Information behavior' also used in library and information science to refer to a sub-discipline that engages a wide range of research conducted in order to understand the human relationship to information. Interest in this area developed many years ago. Librarians wanted to understand the users' information needs and seeking behavior, government agencies wanted to understand the scientist and engineers technical information usage pattern in order to provide and up-date them regarding the new research results. Social scientists were also interested in understanding the social use of information sciences in different areas. Last few years, social studies of information technology and social informatics have contributed to this area as well (Bates & Maack, 2010). There are many sources that can affect or set the information seeking behaviors of doctors. One of the things that effect on doctors' information seeking behavior is the rapid growth of literature. According to Wyatt and Sullivan (2005) amount of medical literature gets double after every 20 years. With this huge amount of growth in literature, it is impossible for doctors to keep abreast with all the latest and updated information in the context of patient management, thus doctors can enhance their knowledge to keep abreast by utilizing various information sources. Multiple types of information sources exist which provide information, but the most important type of the sources are formal sources and informal sources; formal sources include print and electronic sources and informal sources include personal communications. According to McGettigan et al (2011) reported that discussion with pharmaceutical representative and hospital consultants is the most useful source of seeking the information on new drugs. Another study conducted by Ramos, Linscheid and Schafer (2003) ascertained a huge number of human sources by resident doctors to seek the clinical information to answer their clinical questions. …

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