Background:

The amount of information, insufficient language and critical appraisal skills make it difficult for Polish physicians to be up-to-date with clinical information.

Objectives:

To describe experience on the process of filtering information to support Polish physicians.

Methods:

The medical literature (articles published in the medical journals indexed on the ISI Master Journal List, the Cochrane Library and clinical practice guidelines) is screened on a constant basis. The information is filtered (using methodological and clinical criteria, in line with the paradigm of evidence-based medicine) and processed to provide physicians with the most important, valid clinical information in the form of summaries of practice guidelines, structured summaries of clinical studies and systematic reviews, and constantly updated handbook.
In order to be published on the Medycyna Praktyczna website as structured summaries, studies have to meet several criteria (with high internal and external validity of trials as the most important one), and they are accompanied by comments from the experts in the field.

Results:

So far almost 800 practice guidelines have been summarized and published. Only the most important studies are prepared as structured summaries, they cover several areas of medicine, including general medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, surgery, oncology, psychiatry, and neurology. The database currently contains almost 3000 records, segregated by field of medicine. All the studies published as structured summaries and other studies (not summarized) identified by collaborating physicians are collected for inclusion in the update of handbook. All the guidelines and summaries, as well as online version of the handbook are available free of charge. The online handbook has 15,000 users (physicians and dentists), and 50,000 visits per month are recorded (with the mean duration of each visit approximating four minutes).

Conclusions:

Providing physicians with constant access to up-to-date clinical information enables them to overcome language and skills barriers, possibly facilitating pathways to evidence-based medical care in Poland.