The current emphasis within the NHS on clinical effectiveness involves the need to ensure that practice is based on knowledge derived from research rather than on strongly held tradition or personal experience. However, busy practitioners find it increasingly difficult to keep abreast of all available research. This is hardly surprising when one considers that there are over 20,000 biomedical journals which contain over two million articles each year ( 1 ). These articles vary greatly in quality and often are not well indexed. Practitioners involved in patient care rarely have the time, resources and skills to gather together and critically appraise relevant research in an effort to inform their practice. However, one way of pulling together unmanageable amounts of research is through a systematic review ( 2 ): 'A systematic- review is the process of systematically locating, appraising and synthesising evidence from scientific studies in order to obtain a reliable overview.'

Aim-To identify and describe current methods of making health related research evidence accessible to general practice staV in the Northern and Yorkshire Region. Method-A postal survey questionnaire of general practice staV in the Northern and Yorkshire Region. Results-At least one completed questionnaire was obtained from 70% of the general practices surveyed, and the individual response rate to the survey was 45%. Just under 60% of all respondents reported having no access to the NHS internet and just under 50% also reported having no access to the internet. All respondents in this survey reported greater access to paper based information than to electronic databases. However, this research provides evidence of diVerential access to information resources between diVerent professions in general practice with GPs clearly having easier access than other professions to both paper based resources and electronic databases. 70% of all respondents said that they would need to be trained to use either a computer, the internet, or to search databases if the opportunity for easy access to any of these information services was available. Conclusions-At the time of this survey, general practices seemed to be struggling to set up the infrastructure and develop the skills that are necessary to make best use of available research evidence. In addition, there is a need for further investigation into the reasons why diVerent professions working in the same practice setting have diVerential access to information resources available in primary care.

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