Online Information Seeking Behavior of Health professionals: the Case of Private and Public Hospitals in Addis Ababa
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Date
2013-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background: Online information has become a ubiquitous part of health information lives, so that most health professionals have access to and are comfortable with using it to look for online healthcare provision and decision making.
Objective: To identify the behavior of online information use of health professionals for provision of health care.
Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in seven selected hospitals in Addis Ababa,Ethiopia using both quantitative and qualitative methods by using self-administered survey questionnaire. Data were analyzed using correlation and multiple regression statistical procedures.
Results: The results of this study has shown that ease of information seeking, feeling empowered, self-health management and support from the online community has been powerful motivators. Predictive association in healthcare provision using multiple linear regression coefficients, when access to online health information increases by 0.039, 0.028 and 0.025 units for 1 unit increase in the scales of empowerment, online social networking and cognitive involvement with related health information respectively, and decreases by 0.007 units for 1 unit increases in the scale of age. Likewise, Predictive association in healthcare provision using multiple linear regression coefficients retained positively correlated with access to online health information and ease of information seeking, getting preventive healthcare tests, self-healthcare management & privacy and positive outcomes
related to networking and learning with increasing rate of (0.182, 0.346, 0.021 and 0.495) respectively.
Conclusion: Health information from online sources is a significant component of health professionalsā self-healthcare provision plan and initiates collaboration of professionals work in overall health care dissemination and retrieval information. However, health professionals expressed strong desire to use internet sources, the study has identified a number of barriers to use internet.
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Keywords
Information Seeking Behavior ,Health professionals