Table 2.

Most Common Obstacles to Answering Patient-care Questions

	Frequency n (%)†
A.Obstacles preventing pursuit of answers (212 questions)*
Doubt about the existence of relevant information	52 (25)
Ready availability of consultation leading to a referral rather than a search	47 (22)
Lack of time to initiate a search for information	41 (19)
Question not important enough to justify a search for information	31 (15)
Uncertainty about where to look for information	16 (8)
B.Obstacles to finding answers to pursued questions (questions)*
Topic or relevant aspect of topic not included in the selected resource	153 (26)
Failure of the resource to anticipate ancillary information needs	41 (7)

^*Physicians did not pursue answers to 477 questions. They provided reasons for their decision not to pursue answers to 212 questions. When the analysis was limited to questions about patients seen during the observation periods (excluding questions about previous patients), the relative frequencies of the most common obstacles were similar. The five most common obstacles preventing pursuit of an answer were “doubt about the existence of relevant information” (32 questions, 13% of 243 not pursued), “lack of time to initiate a search for information” (18 questions, 7%), “question not important enough to justify a search for information” (18 questions, 7%), “ready availability of consultation leading to a referral rather than a search” (14 questions, 6%) “resource needed was physically distant” (eight questions, 3%). The two most common obstacles among pursued questions were “topic or relevant aspect of topic not included in the selected resource” (44 questions, 22% of 198 pursued) and “inadequacy of resource's index (12 questions, 6%).

^†Percentages do not add to 100% because only the most common obstacles are included.