RESUMEN
Objective: In teaching hospitals, the clinical encounter is an increasingly significant component of interns' curriculum and one of the clinical experiences of interns is emergency medicine. This research was conducted to provide new insights on interns' information needs in emergency departments. Methods: This study examines the information needs of interns in the emergency departments of teaching hospitals in Iran University of Medical Sciences. Questionnaires and observations were used to collect data from seventy interns. Chi-square, two-tailed and bi-variation correlation tests were used to investigate the relationship among the data. Results: It was observed that the most commonly asked questions related to patient specific information and fewer questions related to organizational questions such as hospital policies and procedures. The analysis revealed a statistically significant relationship (0.576, P<0.01, two-tailed) between the interns’ diagnostic and therapeutic questions. The interns reported that the majority of their information needs were laboratory (84%) and radiography (74%) results and the least of those were dead person transfer (1.4%) and medico-legal coordination (10%). Conclusion: Results showed that the interns underestimated the importance of access to organizational information such as medico-legal and dead person transfer issues in the emergency departments. Findings also support the development of educational programmes to promote student knowledge about organizational information and medico-legal issues in the emergency departments.