What Do Primary Care Practitioners Want to Know? A Content Analysis of Questions Asked at the Point of Care

Abstract

Questions collected at the point of care provide a valuable and unique source of information on the true learning needs of practicing clinicians. The TGCQ classification allowed us to show that a majority of questions had to do with treatment, particularly drug treatment, whereas the use of the ICPC-2 classification illustrated the great variety of questions asked about the diverse conditions encountered in primary care. It is feasible to use electronically collected questions asked by primary care clinicians in clinical practice to categorize self-identified knowledge and practice needs. This could be used to inform the development of future learning activities.

The new diagnostic team

“…A range of hospitals, both urban and rural, community and academic were included in the studies. Bjerre, in her analysis of questions asked at the point of care at an academic health center, found similar proportions [26].…”

Do Continuing Medical Education (CME) Events Cover the Content Physicians Want to Know? A Content Analysis of CME Offerings

“…TABLE shows the breakdown of presentation titles with regard to drug therapies: 18.6% clearly and explicitly identified a focus on drug therapy of a disease or medical condition, 30.9% were considered likely to focus on drug therapy, and 50.7% were considered unlikely to focus on drug therapy. For comparison purposes, TABLE also shows the results from our previous study of questions asked at the point of care assessing whether questions focused on medications or pharmaceutical therapy …”

“…Syllabi of CME annual refresher sessions aimed at family physicians practicing in Canada, from the year 2006, were requested from Canadian medical organizations such as universities and professional associations, based on a list of all accredited CME sessions obtained from the College of Family Physicians of Canada. Syllabi from 2006 were chosen so that the sessions were contemporaneous with the point‐of‐care questions asked by physicians, used in our previous study . After several rounds of follow‐up contact by a research assistant with 32 CME organizing bodies, the syllabi for 26 events were obtained (81.3% response rate).…”

“…One medical student rater (NRP) was trained by a practicing clinician (LMB) and conducted the coding using the ICPC‐2 classification scheme. Details of the training were published previously . When there was uncertainty as to the appropriate classification, it was discussed with the principal investigator (LMB), a practicing family physician, to see if consensus could be reached; in the exceptional cases where consensus could not be reached, the physician's decision prevailed.…”

“…This article focuses on the educational problem of how to ensure that continuing education addresses important gaps in primary care physicians’ knowledge. Our previous research has focused on the questions physicians ask at the point of care and assessed whether electronically collected questions asked by primary care physicians at the point of care could be used to identify specialty‐specific knowledge gaps and general practice needs . These self‐reported questions ( n = 1889) were captured using the Just in Time (JIT) medical librarian consultation service .…”