Assessing How Healthcare Providers Find Information Regarding the Benefits and Harms of Treatments in Response to Patient Inquiries at an Independent Academic Center: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background Patients with medical information have become active participants in their treatment process; however, this has created additional challenges for physicians and other healthcare providers. However, how providers cope with patients' requests for such information is not well understood, and the information-seeking behavior of physicians in catering to patients' information needs has not been thoroughly studied. The primary objectives of this cross-sectional study were to understand healthcare providers' information-seeking behavior when responding to patients' specific questions about the benefits and risks of treatments. Methodology This Institutional Review Board-approved study was conducted at an independent academic center in Allentown, PA, between 2017 and 2020. We collected pertinent data from structured one-on-one interviews using an interview guide. The interviews were recorded using an electronic audio recorder that saved the recordings as an audio file. Interview transcripts were analyzed using hand coding. We investigated the relationship between categorical participant attributes using the chi-square or Fisher's exact test at a significance level of 0.05, with continuity correction. We used the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests to investigate the differences between the distribution of continuous variables across the participants' categorical attributes. Results A total of 124 providers from eight departments participated. The majority, 62% (77/124) of the providers, reported that patients brought information about treatment, and 56% (69/124) about a diagnosis. We did not notice a significant variation in the number of patients who brought in information related to their diagnosis (p = 0.08), prognosis (p = 0.35), and other topics, such as birth control, food allergies, and vaccines (p = 0.13), across medical specialties. Overall, 72% (89/124) of the providers reported using DynaMed, UpToDate, and Lexicomp, and 54% (67/124) used PubMed. Further, 27% (33/124) referenced the clinical practice guidelines, 17% (21/124) of the providers referred to textbooks, and 15% (19/124) discussed the topic with colleagues. Moreover, 35% (44/124) of the providers reported conducting traditional critical appraisals to determine the credibility of the information. We did not observe a significant variation in the number of providers using the library website to access journals and the PubMed database (p = 0.29) or in the number of providers seeking information from their colleagues (p = 0.58) across medical specialties. Providers who have recently finished their training (median experience = 6 years; range = 3-15) reported being not satisfied with their process of seeking information compared with providers with a greater level of experience (median = 15 years; range = 3-45) reporting being satisfied and (median = 14.5 years; range = 4-34) reporting being somewhat satisfied (p = 0.04). Conclusions We found that most physicians across all medical specialties utilized and preferred point-of-care tools, such as DynaMed and UpToDate. However, many providers still rely on the reputation of the information source, such as a journal's impact factor and the author's research credentials, to determine the credibility and reliability of the information.