International Journal of
Library and Information Science

  • Abbreviation: Int. J. Lib. Inf. Sci.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 2141-2537
  • DOI: 10.5897/IJLIS
  • Start Year: 2009
  • Published Articles: 246

Article in Press

Information needs of medical practitioners of federal medical specialist hospital Owerri, Imo State – Nigeria.

Cajethan Uchechukwu Anumkua

  •  Received: 03 October 2018
  •  Accepted: 22 February 2019
The study examined the information needs of medical practitioners’ in Federal Medical Specialist Hospital, Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. It sought to determine the methods medical practitioners’ in the Federal Specialist Hospital use in obtaining their information needs and to proffer strategies for effective information delivery to the medical practitioners. A descriptive survey research design method was used for the study with a purposively population of110 medical practitioners’. Questionnaire was used as the main instrument for data collection. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the research questions. The study found out that Print resources were found to be the most popularly used information resources by medical practitioners’ as well as informal and formal discussions with their colleagues were means of obtaining their information needs. The study showed that lack of current and up to dated information resources, inadequate fund and lack of Information Technology (IT) skills constitute hindrances to effective provision of information needs to medical practitioners’ in Federal Medical Specialist Hospital, Owerri. The study recommends that there is need for the training of Medical practitioners’ on Information Technology (IT) skills in order to enable them read and downloads current journals and conference papers on medical fields.

Keywords: Information, Information Needs, Information Resources, Medical treatment, Medical ethics, Medical Practitioners, patients, medical prescriptions, Federal Medical Specialist Hospital, Nigeria.