Study of MEDLINE in clinical settings: Design and preliminary results

Microcomputer online access has been introduced to medical literature databases (MEDLINE through Grateful Med, and Colleague through Mirror) into selected clinical settings in an acute-care/teaching hospital to assess the frequency, patterns, purposes, and success of use by clinicians at different levels of training and practice. Results at the halfway point of the study indicate that 83% of those offered a three-hour training program accepted it and that 64% of the attending staff and 72% of the house staff who underwent training went on to do searches on their own. Among those who do search, the average number of searches during five months of observation for the attending staff has been 1.4 per person per month and for the house staff, 2.3 per person per month, with broad ranges for both groups. A random sample of the novice (N) searches were duplicated independently by both librarians (L) and content expert clinicians with some search experience (E). All searchers retrieved some relevant articles but only 9 of the 585 total articles (1.2%) were retrieved by all three search groups. The number of relevant articles retrieved by N, L and E respectively were 92, 88 and 141 (p < 0.0005 for N-E and L-E pairs and p = 0.8 for N-L pair), and the relevant percentages were 41%, 54%, and 47% (p < 0.05).