Patients should search for information on the internet. Although all the information not reliable on the internet , patients also get lost and confused; and are always trying to second-guess their doctor’s advice. Also this is a reason for for doctors to be irritated when patients bring a lot of printouts from multiple website. Many doctors are convinced that all this online research is a waste of time, because patients don’t have the maturity to be able to interpret the information they unearth. Not only do they lack context , a lot of the information they retrieve is of poor quality and outdated . The standard party line amongst doctors is that patients are worse off by going on the internet . They should instead just trust their doctor to do what’s right for them.
In a perfect world , patients would be able to trust their doctor blindly, but we all know that this is not going to happen, it’s way to go for doctors to gain the trust of a patient. Also, the internet is always available , and it’s perfectly natural that patients are going to use it.
We need to help patients to learn to differentiate good sites from the bad ones. Patients also don’t enjoy spending hours digging up medical information when they go online. Patients will often get a headache when they try to do their research on their own, because they get confused when the come across conflicting information n different websites. They aren’t sure whom to trust, and need assistance further.
Doctors need to guide patients how to use digital platform effectively with some reference. This way both patients and their doctors confident that the information they will get will be updated, trustworthy and reliable. They should use useful sites as homework , and then build on this if they need more depth. This way they won’t waste their time – and their doctors – by going to unreliable sites.
It’s high time for patients to spend their quality time searching healthcare related queries, services and opportunities already available on the internet, ans with the practice of this they will be able to identify the differences between reliable and not reliable sources on the internet.
Digital Health is anything that touches an electronic medium to deliver care.
— Watchdoq Healthcare.
Consider this as the first post of Watchdoq Healthcare blog. Stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when we post new updates.
watchdoqhealth 