The participatory medicine attitudes of general practitioners in Greece: An information behaviour perspective

Abstract

General Practitioners (GPs) need to keep up with a wide range of medical conditions and at the same time closely interact with their patients to provide preventive care and health education. This requires effectively sourcing, utilizing, and sharing quality information with their patients as well as creating participatory and shared decision-making health environments. This paper explores the information seeking behaviour of GPs and their attitudes towards participatory medicine (PM). A questionnaire based survey with GPs in Greece, registered with the Hellenic Society of General Practitioners (HSGP) was conducted and included an exploration of three different information seeking dimensions (information needs, sources and barriers) that were associated with GPs’ perceptions of PM. The survey results demonstrate an interplay of demographic and contextual factors in the choice of information sources and the barriers encountered and conclude that the effective utilization of online information sources is an essential condition for PM practices.