JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Nowadays, Internet has become the primary source of information for physicians seeking answers to medical questions about their patients before consulting colleagues. However, many websites display information of low quality, less reliability, and lack scientific verification. Therefore, physicians need to develop information search skills to locate relevant and evidence-based information. However, previous studies have shown that physicians often have poor search skills and encounter difficulties in finding information on the Web. These challenges may have detrimental consequences on patient care.

Objective:

The present study aims to determine how medical students-residents search for medical information on Internet, what quality of web resources they utilize (including the nature and credibility of resources), and how they evaluate the reliability of web resources and the answers they provide. Given the importance of domain knowledge (in this case, medicine) and information search skills to the search activity, we compared the search behaviors of medical students and residents to those of students in computer science. Medical students-residents typically possess higher medical-related knowledge, while students in computer science generally have information search skills.

Methods:

Twenty students participated in this study: ten medical students-residents and ten students in computer science. Data were extracted from a freely accessible dataset. All participants were tasked with searching for information on the web to make a medical diagnosis, select a treatment, and enhance their knowledge of a medical condition—three primary activities they engage in online. We analyzed search performance metrics (such as search time, medical-related keywords used, and accuracy of information found) as well as the nature and credibility of web resources utilized by medical students and residents compared to students in computer science.

Results:

Students-residents in medicine provided, in mean, more accurate answers than students in computer science, all without requiring additional time. Their background in medicine also enabled them to better evaluate the reliability of resources and select high-quality web resources more effectively than students in computer science, primarily from hospital websites. However, it is noteworthy that students-residents in medicine utilized very few evidence-based tools, such as PubMed.

Conclusions:

Although that students-residents in medicine had in general high performance than students in computer science, they did not use frequently evidence-based tools. As previously observed students-residents may avoid using databases due to the risk of encountering too many irrelevant articles and difficulties in applying correct filters to locate relevant information. Nevertheless, clinical and practical evidence-based medicine can significantly contribute to updating physicians' knowledge, improving patient care, and enhancing physician-patient relationships. Therefore, information search should be an integral part of medical training programs and continuing medical education for physicians.