English abstract
The study aimed to investigate the reality of the information overload among Royal Hospital physicians in the Sultanate of Oman during 2012. It also aimed to identify the factors that cause information overload from their point of view and the methods according to which they deal with this phenomenon and the best ways to address it.
The study relied on the descriptive approach, and used the questionnaire as a tool to collect the data from the study population, which consisted of 339 physicians from the Royal Hospital representing different disciplines. The response rate reached (38.93%).
The reliability of the questionnaire was tested by a group of referees from Department of Information Studies at the College of Arts and Social Sciences and Psychology Department from College of Education where the internal consistency coefficient (Alpha Cronbach's) was calculated through the use of Split-half of the overall scale, which was (0.751).
The results showed that there was a clear effect of the information overload phenomenon on most of the subjects of the study and it represented a problem for them. The study indicated that they were suffering from this phenomenon inside and outside work. The study also revealed the most important factors that caused this phenomenon, which included the lack of knowledge about search strategies due to the increasing number of information channels. These physicians deal with this phenomenon by discarding unnecessary information, and ignoring some important information . The study identified the most important ways which the participants see appropriate to address this phenomenon, such
as the educating of each individual with regard to the required skills to search for information and use it effectively (information literacy).
The statistical tests indicated that there was no statistically significant correlation at the level of significance less than 0.05 between the skill of information literacy and the information overload because the value of significance was 0.990, as well as the presence of statistically significant differences at the level less than 0.01 between the averages of the age group 20-39 variable regarding their attitudes towards the information overload phenomenon. Regarding the rest of the variables such as specialty, department and years of experience, it was found that there were no statistically significant differences with regard to the respondents attitudes towards information overload.
In the light of these findings, the study presented a number of recommendations, the most important ones were the organizing of training courses for the benefit of the physicians working in the Royal Hospital in order to develop their level of information literacy and equip them with the information searching and assessing skills. Additionally, it recommended the preparing of a guide to the websites related to medical disciplines of interest to the Royal Hospital physicians and adding the link of this guide to either the hospital website or to the medical library website. The study also some suggestions such as the conducting of a study about reality of the information overload among the faculty at Sultan Qaboos University as it is the largest university in the Sultanate and a national study about information overload among physicians working in all the referral hospitals in the Sultanate.
