Words doctors use to describe patients who Google their own diagnoses.
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{ 8 comments }
My mother constantly Googles her symptoms, even the minor ones. I feel it is turning her into a neurotic, obsessed bundle of nerves but when I urge her to stop doing it, she gets angry and accuses me of discouraging her from being “an empowered patient.”
I guess it isn’t just the physicians who find the health-Googlers frustrating and annoying.
And, all too often, and most annoying of all…”right”.
They can google all they want. I don’t care. My patients come for my opinion if they don’t want it then so be it, they can go elsewhere
If I had started googling some years ago, maybe I would’ve had my POF diagnosed sooner. I would’ve realized that what I experienced were really hot flushes and not “heating system malfunction” and that it is not normal for a 33 year old to have 2- and 3- months delays. Then, I could’ve insisted on hormone test. At the very least I would’ve brought up hot flashes to my doctor’s attention and she could’ve figured it out. Would’ve helped my bones. I might even still ovulated occasionally at the time my symptoms started and could’ve rushed to have a baby instead of thinking “there is still time”.
I think it goes both ways. An intelligent, critically-minded layperson with hours of research time might just do a better job figuring certain types of things out than a doctor anxious to get the patient out the door.
I can see how someone might spend hours looking into something and be skeptical when a doctor dismisses all of it with a wave of his or her hand and boots them out the door.
Unfortunately, I think the number of intelligent, critically-minded people out there investigating these things online are in the distant minority, and even then, when a disagreement occurs, the doctor is still probably right.
But like it or not, people are going to be curious, and they’re going to research these things. If a doctor just dismisses it all without an explanation, the patients become skeptical and distrustful. Yes, it’s stupid and irrational to feel that way, but it will still happen. How should we (patients and doctors) deal with that?
I don’t mind the informed patient although they often take much more time than the uninformed. I listen to patients googled concerns and will sometimes agree, sometimes recommend tests to address their concerns, and sometimes explain why they have googled themselves way off base.
I do agree that it can be annoying. Like the time the whole family was irate and pointing to their watches at how we had blown the 3 hour T-PA for stroke window for grandma who got dizzy after looking up in a tree at birds, and was no longer symptomatic in the least.
When you are a subspecialty physician it doesn’t matter, patients can google till the cows come home. Heck, their whole family can sit around with laptops googling for years they are not going to outdiagnose me period.
Yeah…. they are downright irritating. Sometimes I just tell them straight in the face to go get their medication online since they trust the web more than me!
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