Abstract

Information-seeking Behaviour (IB) of medical doctors is crucial to satisfying information needs relating to patients’ treatment and improvement of healthcare service delivery. Evidence has shown that most doctors rely solely on their existing knowledge and experience during consultations in providing medical care to patients. This trend often leads to medical errors that undermine the quality of the healthcare. This study, therefore, was designed to examine medical doctors’ IB in teaching hospitals in Nigeria. The descriptive survey design was adopted and the multi-stage procedure was used. Six teaching hospitals across five geo-political zones in Nigeria were randomly selected, excluding the Northeast zone for safety reasons, while 13 medical specialities common to the hospitals were purposively selected. Five out of the 13 specialties were randomly selected and 20.0% of medical doctors in each of the selected specialties from each of the six hospitals were selected using the proportionate sampling technique, making a total of 668 medical doctors. The instrument used was the IB (α=0.69) scale, while the data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The majority (72.4%) usually sought further information during patients’ consultations from colleagues (39.5%) and textbooks/drug compendiums (32.9%). Time pressure, heavy patient load, distraction of doctor-patient communication, perceived patients’ anxiety and information ambiguity were reasons for which some doctors did not seek information. Beyond patients’ consultations, the most preferred sources of medical information by the doctors were journals (31.4%) and textbooks (28.2%). Journals and textbooks were the leading sources of medical information considered most useful and thus preferred by doctors, and about one-third do not usually seek answers to their information needs during patient consultation. Therefore, the hospitals’ libraries should regularly alert users, in general, on available information sources and promote the values of library patronage among them. Hospitals’ management should also organise a series of brief, individualised training sessions on information-seeking for medical practitioners, to enhance their efficiency in seeking medical information.