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Record W4412832021 · doi:10.5195/jmla.2025.2082

Physicians’ information-seeking, appraising, and clinical decision-making practices for drug prescriptions: an exploratory study

2025· article· en· W4412832021 on OpenAlexaff
Akhi Nath, Julien Meyer, Mathieu Templier

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of the Medical Library Association JMLA · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldHealth Professions
TopicHealth Sciences Research and Education
Canadian institutionsUniversité LavalToronto Metropolitan UniversityUniversity of Toronto
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMedical prescriptionDrugExploratory researchClinical decision makingMedicineFamily medicinePsychologyPharmacologySociology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Objective: The purpose of this study is to understand the process of physicians' evidence-based clinical decision-making for new drug prescriptions. Methods: Eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted, and thematic coding was used for data analysis. Results: Several findings emerged. First, point-of-care information seeking focuses more on accessible and easy-to-use sources, such as medical websites, while out-of-practice searches encompass broader sources such as printed sources and extended networks. Medical websites are becoming preferred sources of information. Second, critical appraisal of information is performed passively by using pre-appraised information sources and referring to professional networks. Third, professional networks (i.e., specialists and senior colleagues) remain essential throughout the process and are pivotal for the decision to change prescription practices. Conclusions: Medical information systems that facilitate immediate access to summarized reliable evidence and feature real-time connectivity to the communities of practice can be an effective strategy for improving physicians' evidence-based practice for new drug prescriptions.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.019
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.040
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.981
Threshold uncertainty score0.098

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0190.040
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.001
Science and technology studies0.0040.003
Scholarly communication0.0030.003
Open science0.0010.003
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.077
GPT teacher head0.515
Teacher spread0.437 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designObservational
DomainMethods
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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