Use of the Internet by Sudanese doctors and medical students

Patterns of use of the Internet were investigated by a questionnaire survey of 102 hospital doctors and 123 medical students in Khartoum, Sudan, in January 2005. More doctors (84.3%) had used the Internet than had students (78.9%). Half of consultants (55.0%) used the Internet daily, compared with only 18.2% of junior doctors. Many consultants and junior doctors rated their abilities as poor (60.0% and 53.1%). One-third of students (33.3%) used the Internet only for personal and not for academic purposes. Barriers to greater use of the Internet by doctors included: time constraints (80.2%), poor skills (54.6%), no access to full texts of journal articles (53.4%), difficulty in verifying the quality of information (47.6%) and high costs (41.8%). Students faced similar barriers but also listed poor knowledge of the English language.