Each focus group consisted of 7–9 physicians working in the PHC as family medicine specialists, residents or general practitioners using the same EMR system since 2008. The characteristics of the focus group participants are reported in table 1. Table 1 Characteristics of physicians Each focus group consisted of a mix of males and females

of different age groups and professional experience. Several themes www.selleckchem.com/products/AG-014699.html emerged from the focus groups about the implementation of the EMR (table 2). The main themes were categorised as physician issues, patient issues and system (Cerner) issues. These categories of main themes were arrived at through consensus during analysis of the focus group transcripts after the interviews. Participants repeatedly referred to or mentioned these themes during their discussions. Table 2 Summary of themes of all focus groups Physician-dependent factors The initial impression of physicians In general, physicians spoke favourably about the EMR system implementation, for example, “I think that, I do believe that my first impression was so amazing” (FG1), but all remarked that the beginning was difficult,

for example, “At the beginning, as anything when you use it for the first time, it will look complex until you get familiar to the system” (FG3). Computer skills They believed that computer skills had a major role in understanding the EMR as they mentioned that old generation physicians were slower in typing and learning new tricks. There is a difference in competency among physicians in dealing with technology, for example, “Old generation doctors, whom I respect a lot of course, let’s say there is a urine culture results, they don’t know that there is a click where you can get the susceptibility” (FG1). Another example, “if

you don’t know like Alt and C is copying and Alt and V is pasting, (it takes) for a lot of people it causes a lot of difficulties” (FG2). “For me for example if I want to explain something for the patient in anatomy, instead of drawing I will just enter the Google and the patient will be very happy: ohm, this is how it look, this is how the Batimastat anatomy. And when you want to illustrate the disease process through pictures the patient will be very happy.” It was also useful to provide the patient with very useful educational materials. The training Physicians appeared to have various opinions about the training period. Some were completely satisfied, for example, “It was sufficient, the training was good, of course the training itself to how to deal with computer at the beginning start in a good way” (FG3), while others were not satisfied and expressed that they were not aware of some facilities available in the EMR system, for example, “How to order everything at the start was very clear and comprehensive in the training part but when we start on the note part the training was not sufficient, in my opinion” (FG3).