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Physicians’ perception of alternative displays of clinical research evidence for clinical decision support – A study with case vignettes
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Physicians’ perception of alternative displays of clinical research evidence for clinical decision support – A study with case vignettes

Stacey L. Slager, Charlene R. Weir, Heejun Kim, Javed Mostafa and Guilherme Del Fiol
Journal of biomedical informatics, v 71, pp S53-S59
Jul 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2017.01.007
PMID: 28089913
url
https://europepmc.org/articles/pmc5509533View
Accepted (AM) Open Open Access (License Unspecified)

Abstract

Clinical decision making Clinician information needs Information display Information foraging theory Information seeking
[Display omitted] •Alternative display formats for clinical trials were designed to support patient care decisions.•Design informed by Information Foraging theory and information visualization principles.•Physician participants preferred a table display format compared to narrative.•Table information display reduced perceived cognitive effort.•Table displays could increase usefulness and usability of clinical trials at the point of care. To design alternate information displays that present summaries of clinical trial results to clinicians to support decision-making; and to compare the displays according to efficacy and acceptability. A 6-between (information display presentation order) by 3-within (display type) factorial design. Two alternate displays were designed based on Information Foraging theory: a narrative summary that reduces the content to a few sentences; and a table format that structures the display according to the PICO (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome) framework. The designs were compared with the summary display format available in PubMed. Physicians were asked to review five clinical studies retrieved for a case vignette; and were presented with the three display formats. Participants were asked to rate their experience with each of the information displays according to a Likert scale questionnaire. Twenty physicians completed the study. Overall, participants rated the table display more highly than either the text summary or PubMed’s summary format (5.9vs. 5.4vs. 3.9 on a scale between 1 [strongly disagree] and 7 [strongly agree]). Usefulness ratings of seven pieces of information, i.e. patient population, patient age range, sample size, study arm, primary outcome, results of primary outcome, and conclusion, were high (average across all items=4.71 on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1=not at all useful and 5=very useful). Study arm, primary outcome, and conclusion scored the highest (4.9, 4.85, and 4.85 respectively). Participants suggested additional details such as rate of adverse effects. The table format reduced physicians’ perceived cognitive effort when quickly reviewing clinical trial information and was more favorably received by physicians than the narrative summary or PubMed’s summary format display.

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6 citations in Scopus

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