Background & Objectives: With respect to the importance of observing principles of documentation of medical records for educational, treatment, research, legal and statistical uses, the correct, complete and timely registration of this information can play a crucial role in the production of necessary data for these kinds of researches. This study was performed to investigate the process of documentation of medical records of the patients in hospitals under Ardabil university of medical sciences.

  Methods: In this research 370 medical records from eight hospitals under Ardabil university of medical sciences were studied. In each hospital samples were selected randomly based on the number of patients hospitalized in one year. Then according to admission and discharge sheets a certain checklist was completed. The information under study included dignosis, treatment, surgery, cause of the accident, patient condition on dircharge, postdischarge advice and cause of death (whether recorded or not) which were identified in the check list. The data were analyzed by SPSS using descriptive statistics.

  Results : The findings showed that primary, interim and final diagnosis and treatment measures were recorded 71.9%, 58.9% ,60.8% and 52% respectively in the records studied. Althougt 12.7% of these patients were hospitalized dueto accidents, damage and poisoning, only in 8.5% of them the external causes were recorded. In 68% of the records, condition on discharge and in 76.3% of them recommendation on discharge had not been recorded. 3.5% of the records were related to dead patients, but only in 31% of them the main cause and in 8% underlying cause of death was recorded. In general, in 5 2.4% of these records the correct methods of medical recording were not observed by physicians.

  Conclusion: The results indicated that the process of documentation of medical record by physicians as the main presenters of health care services was performed incompletely. This can lead to the loss of valuable information about the hospitalized patients. It can also have negative impacts on the course of therapy. As a result, the authorities, physicans and specialists in medical recording should pay special attention to this problem.

  Background & Objective: General physicians require a number of different resources to cover the broad scope of their practice. A critical point in their medical practice is timely access to the wide variety of clinical information sources that contribute to patient care decisions. The aims of this study were to assess information seeking behavior of Ardabil general physicians and their approach towards electronic sources.

 Methods: This study was done using Questionnaire research method. A total of 191 questionnaires were distributed among GPs and 167 relevant questionnaires were gathered. Data were analysed applying SPSS.

 Results: 75% of general physicians had access to internet. The majority of them were in search of information for Keeping themselves up-to-date and solving medical problems (78.4%). General physicians' first priority was text books, and the second priority was continuing medical education courses for meeting information needs. They used mostly books followed by medical journals as formal channels, and updated their information taking part in continuing medical education courses followed by congresses and seminar as informal channels. As obstacles to finding necessary information they reported lack of adequate time (61.7%), near to half of them (47.3%) reported lack of sufficient information resources in libraries, and unfamiliarity with medical databases (40%).

 Conclusion: General physicians are aware of the importance of internet in accessing information, but they did not use it as an important tool to answer questions rising in practice. The majority of general physicians used books to access information followed by continuing medical education courses, and used internet in the sixth rate. The majority of them used low rate the internet, electronic resources, and medical databases because of inadequate familiarity with them. General physicians need training in internet, web search tools and search methods, and medical databases.