Challenges of Providing Health Information Prescription Services and Suggested Solutions: A Qualitative Study

This study aims to identify the challenges of providing health information prescription services and review the proposed solutions.

This qualitative research was conducted using the thematic content analysis approach. The statistical population included librarians, medical library faculty members, treatment staff, patients with experience in information prescription, and clinical librarian or patient education. Thirty-seven participants were selected by purposive sampling. The interviews lasted from December 2020 to August 2021. Qualitative analysis was then performed using MAXQDA software version 20.

After analyzing the data, the challenges of providing information prescription services were categorized into five main themes: challenges related to service improvement, patient, staff, infrastructure, organization, and 25 sub-themes. Some essential strategies have been training, protocol development, and designing educational topics according to the necessary skills, culture building, and budgeting.

Providing appropriate and effective health information prescription requires designing and developing protocols, workflow diagrams, and explaining qualified professionals.