Article type
Year
Abstract
Objective: An Electronic Library of Health Care was developed to provide access to evidence-based (para)medical information for all Belgian health care practitioners. The Belgian branch of the Cochrane Collaboration was asked to develop a training program to optimise the use of the online Library. With this research projects we aimed to discover differences in the use of the online information retrieval technology between users who attended the training programs and users who did not enter a training program. This information would be useful to optimise further training programs.
Method: Between October and December 2003 nine training programs were given to a total of 189 users. Users were free to enter the training program. We posted an online questionnaire for all users, which appeared each time a search was finished. We asked five questions: (1) What was the reason for searching?; (2) When did you search?; (3) Did you find an answer to your question?; (4) Was the information new?; (5) Did the information change your practice? For trainees the questionnaire appeared for the first time the day after their training program. After a three months follow-up period we compared the results of trainees with the results of non-trainees, using descriptive statistics in SPSS.
Results: Between October 2003 en February 2004 the library was used 2493 times. We collected 113 evaluation forms. There was a significant difference in the time that was spent to search between trainees and non-trainees. Thirty percent of trainees (T) needed less then 10 minutes to search. In the group of non-trainees (NT)only 16% searched for less than 10 minutes. Compared to non-trainees, trainees also tend to (1) search more during consultations (T=10% and NT=5%); (2) find an answer more often (T=74% and NT=60%); (3) find new insights more often (T=49% and NT=35%) and (4) change their clinical practice more often (T=30% and NT=15%).
Conclusion: A training program seems to have a positive impact on the use of online information retrieval technology. However, because of a lack of qualitative data no information could be given on which information was new and in what way the use of the Virtual Library changed the clinical practice of users. Further research seems to be necessary to completely understand the impact of the training programs.
Method: Between October and December 2003 nine training programs were given to a total of 189 users. Users were free to enter the training program. We posted an online questionnaire for all users, which appeared each time a search was finished. We asked five questions: (1) What was the reason for searching?; (2) When did you search?; (3) Did you find an answer to your question?; (4) Was the information new?; (5) Did the information change your practice? For trainees the questionnaire appeared for the first time the day after their training program. After a three months follow-up period we compared the results of trainees with the results of non-trainees, using descriptive statistics in SPSS.
Results: Between October 2003 en February 2004 the library was used 2493 times. We collected 113 evaluation forms. There was a significant difference in the time that was spent to search between trainees and non-trainees. Thirty percent of trainees (T) needed less then 10 minutes to search. In the group of non-trainees (NT)only 16% searched for less than 10 minutes. Compared to non-trainees, trainees also tend to (1) search more during consultations (T=10% and NT=5%); (2) find an answer more often (T=74% and NT=60%); (3) find new insights more often (T=49% and NT=35%) and (4) change their clinical practice more often (T=30% and NT=15%).
Conclusion: A training program seems to have a positive impact on the use of online information retrieval technology. However, because of a lack of qualitative data no information could be given on which information was new and in what way the use of the Virtual Library changed the clinical practice of users. Further research seems to be necessary to completely understand the impact of the training programs.