Health information seeking behavior among health professionals working at Addis Ababa health bureau Hospitals.
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Date
2013-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Background: Health information plays a significant role in the quality of decisions made by health professionals while delivering health services. Utilization of information among health professionals differs as a result of individual health information seeking behavior. Researches showed that individual, organizational and infrastructure factors affect the health information seeking behavior.
Objective: To assess health information seeking behavior of health professionals working in Addis Ababa health bureau owned hospitals.
Methods: - A cross-sectional survey using qualitative and quantitative methods was used to assess health information seeking behavior of health professionals working in six hospitals. Self administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 422 respondents and observational check list was used to collect qualitative data. The collected data was analyzed using EPI INFO version 3.5.1 software and using SPSS statistics version 16 after the data was exported from the EPI INFO software and interprets by using the following parameters: frequencies cross tabulation, binary logistic regression and Odds Ratio (OR). Significant association among study variables and interpretation of data were done by using 95% CI and at p-value<0.05.
Results: Only 339(82.7%) have a characteristics of seeking health information from different sources and places with various frequencies. Majority of the respondents 378(92.2%) have a need to have further on-job training to support their work. The most frequent used information source in almost all study area was medical text books 334(81.5%) but the most preferred HIRsby respondents are on job training 202(49.3%) and electronics and internet 188(45.9%).Economy, time, organizational infrastructure, low disease prevalence and personal initiation are the most common factors in seeking of health information.
Conclusion and recommendation: Majority of respondents has a behavior of seeking health information and most of them accessed printed resources but they prefer electronic materials and discuss with colleagues to solve their information limitation related to health. So all concerned body must give attention to these and must work in information sharing by using consultationand morning session methods.
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Keywords
Health information , Health professionals ,Seeking behavior