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The Application of Foraging Theory to the Information Searching Behaviour of General Practitioners by Mai Dwairy; Anthony C Dowell; Jean-Claude Stahl is a Health Professions article available to read on EtoBox.

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## Background General Practitioners (GPs) employ strategies to identify and retrieve medical evidence for clinical decision making which take workload and time constraints into account. Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT) initially developed to study animal foraging for food is used to explore the information searching behaviour of General Practitioners. This study is the first to apply foraging theory within this context. Study objectives were: 1. To identify the sequence and steps deployed in identifiying and retrieving evidence for clinical decision making. 2. To utilise Optimal Foraging Theory to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of General Practitioner information searching. ## Methods GPs from the Wellington region of New Zealand were asked to document in a pre-formatted logbook the steps and outcomes of an information search linked to their clinical decision making, and fill in a questionnaire about their personal, practice and information-searching backgrounds. ## Results A total of 115/155 eligible GPs returned a background questionnaire, and 71 completed their information search logbook. GPs spent an average of 17.7 minutes addressing their search for clinical information

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Author

Mai Dwairy; Anthony C Dowell; Jean-Claude Stahl

Publisher

BioMed Central; Springer (Biomed Central Ltd.); London: BioMed Central, 2000-; Springer Science and Business Media LLC; Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration Inc. (ISSN 1471-2296)

Published

2011

Language

EN

Field

Health Professions (Health Sciences)