Background: To provide an understanding of the clinical information sources consulted by teaching or referral hospital-based doctors in four South African provinces. Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional survey design was used. To identify provinces, hospitals, and participants, simple random sampling was adopted. This study targeted a total of 276 doctors from all the four hospitals working across different departments within the hospitals. This study was conducted in four selected South African public referral/teaching hospitals in four different provinces, namely Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital in the Eastern Cape province; Witbank Hospital in Mpumalanga province; Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe Hospital in Northern Cape province and lastly, Pietersburg Hospital in Limpopo province. Results: Overall, 221 doctors were surveyed. Doctors relied more on colleagues as formal and informal sources of information. They seldomly relied on newspapers, reference, and library books, or used hospital computers to access the internet. They seldomly attended training workshops organised by the district or provincial office. Protocols and clinical guidelines which are kept in the hospitals and easily accessible were often (27.9%) or always (51.1%) used. Conclusions: Teaching hospitals need to strengthen information resources to ensure that even when colleagues are used as an information source, they are an accessible means to validate the correctness of the information provided.

This publication intends to provide a step-by-step description of the application of factor analysis performed at the two levels and interpretation of the results based on information seeking behaviour of medical professionals of five selected hospitals in O. R. Tambo District municipality in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The data for analysis was collected on different variables using a closed-ended likert scale questionnaire. This study was a cross-sectional, comparative, and correlational survey conducted between January and April 2017, in the Mthatha Hospital Complex, O. R. Tambo District Municipality. The clustering of indicators for extraction of factors was well-defined owing to high loadings across all questions. The analysis was executed on a split data approach. The data were split by gender. The analysis was performed on the separate derived data sets. Descriptive analyses, correlations and component factor analyses were performed. The data consisted of 96.3% South African participants and 3.7% Non-South African. In addition, the sample was composed of 17.5% Males and 82.5% females; 13.8% medical doctors and 86.2% professional nurses. The percentage age distribution was: <=30.00 (21.9%), 31.00 - 37.00 (20.5%), 38.00 - 44.00 (18.5%), 45.00 - 54.00 (19.2%) and 55.00+ (19.9%). The percentage hospital participation distribution was: Holly Cross Hospital (13.9%), Dr Malizo Mpehle Hospital (28.5%), St Barnabas Hospital (21.8%), Zithulele Hospital (18.8%) and St Elizabeth Hospital (17.0%). Use of materials sources available within the hospital as sources of information; Improvement of patient care through collaborative consultations. Use of information acquired through workshops, seminars and journals to improve the participants’ knowledge; Use of internet and hospital facilities as sources of information; Use of reference materials and the medical need dictates the source of information required; Causes of limited availability sources of information; Use of printed material and colleagues to access information. Under the females’ data, the following factors were extracted: Using both external as well as internal sources to solicit information; Lack of: a physical library, limited online access, slow internet and poor online searching skills contribute to non-availability of important medical information; Lack of awareness of sources of information, time taken to access information, non-existent of sources of information; The factor analysis has shown that whereas there were more females than males according to the split data, more factors were established for males than were for females.