Background: The main role of hospital pharmacists in Germany is to prepare and dispense drugs, but they are also essential contact people for physicians, nurses and patients for questions related to pharmacotherapy. To provide high-quality information, hospital pharmacists need access to unbiased and up-to-date drug information sources.
Objectives: Investigation of information habits of hospital pharmacists and identification of barriers limiting appropriate information retrieval in daily routine and continuous education.
Methods: Since October 2013 Cochrane Germany at the Medical Center-University of Freiburg and the Chair of Scientific Journalism at the Technical University (TU) in Dortmund (Germany) have investigated questions relating to medical knowledge translation. A subproject at Cochrane Germany analyses the information-seeking behaviour and the information provision for German hospital pharmacists. Therefore, approximately 1700 members of the German Society of Hospital Pharmacists will be invited by e-mail to complete a voluntary and anonymous online survey. The questionnaire consists of open-ended and closed questions about the importance of different categories of information and the frequency of drug information questions in their daily routine, the most commonly consulted sources, the amount of time available and necessary, their desires concerning access to drug information sources, and demographics about their education and practice setting.
Results: Results of the survey will be available and analyzed in spring 2015 and will be presented at the Cochrane Colloquium 2015.
Conclusions: Our questionnaire will identify whether language barriers, lack of time or limited access are obstacles to hospital pharmacists using drug information sources. Moreover, we will investigate if the information sources used fulfil the requirements of hospital pharmacists.