Health information acquisition in British and Brazilian hospitals

^aTese^bDout. em Ciência da Informação Loughborough University. Department of Information and Library Studies

Orientador: Meadows, A. Jack

The information transfer in the context of hospitals in two countries, the UK and Brazil has been observed and analysed. This entailed identifying patterns of information use and need by medical professionals and ancillaries in both countries, and especially in determining deficiencies in satisfying such needs. The first art of the project has involved participant observation of both medical and library/information staff during visits by the former to the hospital library. After observing the information-related activities of each group and their interactions, subjects have been interviewed to determine their own views of their information-seeking activities. The observations have been carried out at the two types of hospital, and in both the UK and Brazil. The first type is a hospital with a medical school; the second is a major hospital, but not attached to a medical school. (Part of the study is intended to pinpoint informational differences due to differing organisational emphases.) The second part of the project has involved the use of questionnaire and interview to gather data on how health professionals find information outside the library. Interviews were applied after the application of the questionnaires to gather more details on topics not covered by questionnaires. The results cast light on the similarities and differences of the British and Brazilian informational environments. The conclusions examine the guidelines that, particularly for Brazilian hospitals, were drawn from the data such as, the need to implement translation services in Brazilians' libraries in order to facilitate the use of materials from abroad (journals especially), to encourage librarians to make the appropriate planning in order to have the proper budge to develop the the collections according to users' needs, to encourage users to use electronic publications where telecommunication infrastructure is available, as they seem to be cheaper than the printed versions, to develop the habit of doing users' studies as a management tool in order to have a closer picture of users' habits and needs