PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jonathan Kronick
AU  - Catherine Blake
AU  - Eeva Munoz
AU  - Lila Heilbrunn
AU  - Lynn Dunikowski
AU  - William Kenneth Milne
TI  - Improving on-line skills and knowledge. A randomized trial of teaching rural physicians to use on-line medical information.
DP  - 2003 Mar 01
TA  - Canadian Family Physician
PG  - 312--317
VI  - 49
IP  - 3
4099  - http://www.cfp.ca/content/49/3/312.short
4100  - http://www.cfp.ca/content/49/3/312.full
SO  - Can Fam Physician2003 Mar 01; 49
AB  - OBJECTIVE To assess the change in frequency and methods with which a pilot group of rural physicians consulted on-line medical resources before and after an educational intervention. DESIGN Physicians were randomly assigned to an educational intervention or control group. Self-administered questionnaires were completed before and 3 months after the intervention. SETTING Rural practices in southwestern Ontario. PARTICIPANTS Eighty rural (defined as a population of 15000 or less) physicians in southwestern Ontario, with a computer with Internet access. INTERVENTIONS Individualized 3-hour training session on using the World Wide Web to research patient-related questions. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Frequency of access and comfort with on-line medical information were compared after intervention with baseline data using the Wilcoxon two-sample test. RESULTS At follow up, the intervention group showed a significant improvement over the control group in their frequency of accessing the World Wide Web to address patient-related questions (P = .009), in their comfort level in using on-line databases (P = .032), and in their frequency of accessing on-line databases (P = .044). CONCLUSION Rural physicians' comfort and competence in using computers to address patient problems can be improved by an individualized 3-hour training session.