General Medical Practitioners' Approaches to Accessing Animate Sources of Drug Information *

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the decision making approaches for problem solving used by general medical practitioners (GPs) when accessing the animate information sources, colleagues, consultants, drug information centers (DICs), medical information centers, hospital pharmacists, and community pharmacists. Of 463 GPs practicing within the county boundary of Derbyshire on January 1, 1990, 106 were randomly sampled from groups stratified for age; gender; type of practice, single or group; and, use or nonuse of DICs. One hundred interviews were conducted. Structured inspection of transcripts indicated that, if a source was used, it was for either mechanical solutions and allocated to “prescribing practice,” or for“general drug information” which encompassed use for subjective problem solving. For each animate information source, GPs' approaches to “general drug information” use were collated, categorized, and inspected for global trends. This identified two fundamental, discrete approaches. Forty-eight percent of those interviewed, representing 218/463 of the sample frame, were categorized as “source-dependent” and relied predominantly on one or two specific sources or had a method they applied to all situations. These were distinct from the remaining “problem-dependent” GPs who used multiple information sources in a manner dedicated to resolving each problem as though it were unique. No significant differences were found in epidemiological characteristics when GPs were grouped into source-dependent and problem-dependent categories. That GPs could be readily differentiated by two distinct approaches has implications for optimizing the provision of information.