Accessing of Retrospective Information by the Ophthalmologists in India: A Study

Abstract

Health information has high value in society. The accumulated health information empowers the health professionals to serve for millions of lives. The purpose of the study is to examine Ophthalmologists’ – Eye Doctors retrospective information retrieval behaviour. The study design is cross-sectional and convenience sampling method is adopted. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data. SPSS 18 PASW Statistical package was used for statistical analysis. Frequencies, percentages, Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Factor Analysis, Friedman test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used in the study. Around 633 ophthalmologists working in 47 academic eye hospitals from 16 states of India were included in the study. The study results revealed that the majority of the ophthalmologists prefer Review articles. The statistical test results showed up that the ophthalmologists’ retrospective information retrieval preferences differ by experience, institution type. The three major factors of ophthalmologists’ retrospective information retrieval behaviour were identified as Related Resources, Experts / Peers and Information Sources. The Related Resources factor was significantly higher than the Experts / Peers factor and Information Sources factor. The ophthalmic community should motivate the ophthalmologists to publish more review articles. The ophthalmic libraries and information service providers can add a list of related literature for each of their resources.