Reference Website Use Patterns of Poison Control Center Specialists

The purpose of this pilot study was to describe web reference use patterns of poison control center specialists using time tracking software. We analyzed two weeks of web site use data from Utah poison control center (PCC) computers to describe patterns of reference web site use. We observed frequent use of webPOISONCONTROL and Amazon. Specialists visited additional reference web sites that feature tools such as calculators websites provided the function of age calculation was visited sometime. In the future we plan to conduct a qualitative study to interview Specialists in Poison Information to get the rationales of visiting these webpages. This pilot study demonstrates the utility of time tracking software for better understanding reference utilization in the PCC setting.