After reading the news item by Shelley Martin about the results of the 2000 Physician Resource Questionnaire1 and reviewing the additional statistics on the CMA Web site2 I suspect that there is bias in the statistics about computer use by Canadian physicians.
In Alberta, 49.5% of physicians have a known email address, according to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta and the Alberta Medical Association. This is 22.6% lower than the 72.1% figure quoted for email use among Canadian physicians in the “Internet use” section of the Physician Resource Questionnaire statistics.2 I simply do not believe that Alberta physicians are that far below the national average in their use of computers.
I suspect that, as in past surveys, many respondents who do not use computers left the computer questions blank, rather than answering No. If such records were not used when calculating the overall percentages, the percentage of computer users would be falsely high. This might be due in part to the fact that the computer questions appeared at the end of a long questionnaire. I respectfully suggest that the survey analysts compare their email usage figures with membership data from each provincial college of physicians and medical association.
Signature
Barrie McCombs
Director Medical Information Service University of Calgary Calgary, Alta.
References
- 1.Martin S. Almost all physicians have embraced computer use, survey shows. CMAJ 2000; 163(8):1042.11068583
- 2.2000 CMA Physician Resource Questionnaire results. Available: www.cma.ca/cmaj/vol-163/issue-5/prq/index.htm (accessed 20 Mar 2001).