Professor James F. Cawley, PA-C, MPH, of The George Washington University Physician Assistant Program, and Frank Rodino, PA, MHS, of Churchill Communications, presented a poster entitled “Medical Information Access Preferences: Results of a Survey of Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners” at the 6th Annual Meeting of the International Society of Medical Publication Professionals in Washington, DC. 

Although more than 135,000 NPs and 72,400 PAs practice in the US, only limited data are available describing how they access the latest medical information. The authors surveyed more than 350 PAs and NPs from a wide range of clinical specialties and practice settings.

Survey results showed thatPAs and NPs:

·      Arere as likely as physicians to rely on traditional, printed specialty and general medicine journals.

·       Rely heavily on journals that are specific to their professions

·       Are much more likely to access online medical information daily or weekly

·       Have high regard for specialty and evidence based-medicine websites access them frequently, as well as sites such as [url=http://www.epocrates.com]http://www.epocrates.com[/url] and www.uptodate.com

·      Rarely access web conferences, blogs, and podcasts,so the credibility of these media with these audiences is less clear

·      Value interactions with their physician co-workers as highly as they do medical journals, Web sites, and CME activities

·      Were remarkably similar in most of their responses

Follow this link to the poster presentation.