The domain is there.

It never hurts to follow your gut feelings about your own safety, however – if a patient ‘feels’ like a baddie, they quite likely are. You ARE the most educated bunch around, use your marbles. If in doubt, call a PI!

Or better yet, TALK to the patient and LISTEN to the patient. What is a ‘difficult’ patient to one doctor may be the one who makes the next doctor laugh and brightens his day! I’ve seen it.

So, pull up your britches, boys, your paranoia is showing.

I can’t imagine anyone who isn’t a psychologically impaired physician letting a patients political opinions affect him. The idea that everything you need to know is in the medical record is absolutely silly. Nothing is in the medical record until a profesional discovers the information and puts it there. You need to know if someone is a habitual liar or prescription drug abuser, you need to know if someone is reliably compliant or self-destructive in planning treatment. How many people come in and announce that they have Munchausen’s? That they have a history of insurance fraud? That they have prior convictions for forging prescriptions. Google is not a good way to find out these things but in principle, the the usage of collateral sources of information when they can be found is good medicine. Limiting your history to what is already in the medical record is substandard care without seeking to extend, add to, and access the accuracy of the history is sloppy sloppy medicine.

So, if you google someone and find them to be undesireable then you are going to make the assumption that this is your patient when it very well may not be? This is dangerous and if you have time to google all your patients and read everything you find that most likely isn’t even about them then surely you have time to call “next patient” rather than keep a full waiting room waiting for hours on end.

Any info you need should be in the medical record. No reason to go anywhere else except out of voyeurism.

I have a fairly common last name, and a first name that is common in Russia, but relatively uncommon in the US except among Russian immigrants. But to an American my first name sounds rare, so I’d imagine if you find my name on google you’d think it is me.

Out of curiosity I did just that. I have a couple of published papers, so there are a few immediate hits for conference proceedings. But a couple of pages later, there is some girl with exactly the same name who is listed as a TA for a course in my field. It could’ve easily been me 20 years ago, except for the hit is from 2002 and for a class I’ve never TAd. Then, there is somebody with the same name who signed some petition for Bush – the last thing I am likely to do.

Thankfully there are no hits to worry about, but one never knows.

I am sure some sick people would have a hard time getting care were it easy to do so, but if the information is available and helps me do my job better as a physician, secure my personal safety as a human being, or protect my assets for my family, then I would be irresponsible to fail to seek use it.