Evaluation of Motivation and Dissemination of Accessing the Online Evidence Retrieval Databases among Physicians and Medical Students

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has been identified as a core competence to help physicians improve care quality. It integrates several skills into health care, mainly involving in the verification of relevant evidence from the literature. Mastery of acquisition of evidence-based information is an important issue for the implementation of EBM. With the development of medical informatics, the Internet is widely used for locating medical knowledge in recent years. Nevertheless, concerns have been raised regarding the quality of information retrieved from the Internet. Online databases offer easy access to obtain relevant medical information with a summary of individual research evidence. However, our previous research findings showed online databases were not the first priority for a majority of health professionals to look for medical information. In addition to postgraduate health personnel, access to the online database is also an important competence for medical students. The resource of knowledge acquisition will influence how they will practice in the future. However, dissemination and investigation of access to the online database are still lacking. In recent years, more attention has been given to the influence of motivations on learning outcomes. The current study is to investigate the motivation of online database usage and determine the association of various motivations and the strategies for promoting the usage of evidence-based online databases. Targets are senior medical students of Taipei Medical University and physicians of its three affiliated hospitals. This study will investigate how physicians and medical students access the online databases and further identify the useful means to disseminate the usage of online databases. We will use the following methods to facilitate the dissemination – including (1) providing relevant information via e-mail, (2) conducting workshops, (3) having assistance from designated personnel, (4) inviting experts for speeches, and (5) investing in early adopters. During the study period, we will conduct questionnaire survey to investigate how the participants use the online databases. We will compare their behavior in the usage of online databases before and after the dissemination. Furthermore, the data will be analyzed based on the various professions and backgrounds, including comparison of different specialties. Our study will provide useful information of strategies for promoting the usage of evidence-based online databases. The results may facilitate the implementation of EBM and further enhance the healthcare quality.