Background:The Critical incident technique (CIT) has been used for decades in the assessment of the impact of library and information services on patient care and clinical decision making. Objectives:The purpose of this article is to identify and review the studies that have used CIT approach to assess the impact of library and information services on patient care and clinical decision making.Methods: Related articles were searched in the information resources of Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Google Scholar and LISTA. Results: From among 1346 articles obtained, 22 met the inclusion criteria. The analysis of the articles indicated that CIT has been used for various purposes such as assessing the information value, assessing the information resources and librarians in their clinical practice and decision making, examining information-seeking behaviour and analysing cost-benefits.Discussion: Critical incident technique is a flexible approach for libraries and information services, based on individuals' experiences of finding and using information to help resolve a perceived problem. Conclusions:The studies identified in this review offer a variety of methods for using CIT that other libraries might consider for their own impact studies. K E Y W O R D S clinical decision making; critical incident; impact; literature; patient care; review; surveys How to cite this article: Sadeghi, H., Nowkarizi, M., & Tajafari, M. (2022). Critical incident technique helps determine how health library and information services influence clinical decision making and patient care: A literature review.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the information needs of physicians and residents during the clinical decision-making. The research has been performed with phenomenological approach and using semi-structured interview based on critical incident technique with 28 physicians and residents of the educational health care centers of Birjand city South Khorasan province, Iran. The results showed that the information needs of physicians and residents were mostly related to diseases, diagnosis, prescription, treatment, disease follow-up, learning and self-updating, education and research. The information sources utilized were categorized into three main themes of human sources, electronic sources and print sources. The barriers against their information seeking were personal, organizational, technological, skill related, nature of information seeking, and barriers related to information sources. The present study provides a clear picture of the information needs, the information resources and the barriers to finding information for physicians and residents, therefore, the results of the present study can help medical libraries to improve their collection of resources and services to support the information needs of physicians and residents. It also paves the way for designers of information systems in creating systems that suit the needs of physicians in every stage of clinical decision-making and helps libraries in solving the challenges of finding information for physicians.