Internet : une aide ou un labyrinthe pour les médecins ?

Internet, unknown there fifteen years, has become commonly used today to communicate and exchange all types of information. Concerning medical points, this network is full of data and has become indispensable to physicians. The biomedical knowledge base is changing so fast that it is impossible for a doctor to know everything about everything. Specialists are increasingly specialized but must keep award of developments in medical knowledge and above all must be able to search quickly and effectively in a given time. To stay informed, they have several means of which the most common are reading the press, Continuing Medical Education and now Internet. Unfortunately, the richness of the Web is also its main fault so we must have the knowledges for searching, analyzing, among the flood of documents available if we do not want to be caught by the screen. Internet usage is done by two approaches: the pull: dynamic approach to information retrieval and the push: passive process of receiving documents. Most doctors have not been trained to use this tool although it became their main source of knowledge and research. This article aims to outline the main ways to learn about a specific topic by giving some tips for saving time.