Attitudes towards information system security among physicians in Croatia

To examine attitudes about information system security among Croatian physi cians a cross-sectional study was performed on a representative sample of 8 00 Croatian physicians. An anonymous questionnaire comprising 21 questions was distributed and statistical analysis was performed using a chi-square t est. A 76.2% response rate was obtained. The majority of respondents (85.8% ) believe that information system security is a new area in their work. In general, physicians are not informed about European directives, conventions , recommendations, etc. Only a small number of physicians use personal comp uters at work (29%). Those physicians who have a personal computer use it m ainly for administrative reasons. Most healthcare institutions (89%) do not have a security manual and the area of information system security is left to individual interest and initiative. Only 25% of physicians who have a p ersonal computer use any type of password. A high percentage of physicians (22%) has never thought about the problem of personal data being used by or ganizations (e.g. police, banks) without legal background; a small, but sti ll significant percentage of physicians (5.6%) has even agreed with such us e. Results indicate that for the vast majority of physicians, information s ystem security is a new area in their daily work, one which is left to indi vidual interest and initiative. They are not familiar with the ethical, tec hnical and legal backgrounds which have been defined for that area within t he Council of Europe and the European Union. New aspects: This is the first study performed in Central and Eastern Europ e dealing with information system security, performed on a representative n ationwide sample of all the physicians.