Too much information?

How exactly has the internet benefited patients?

The explosion of the internet “” and specifically the explosion of health information on the internet “” has done absolutely nothing for healthcare in America. Has it empowered patients as consumers? Not even close. Has it saved us money? Again, a very loud nope. Has it improved outcomes? Nope”¦it might even worsen outcomes. Has it caused undue anxiety in millions of people? Yep. Has information (some true, some not) clouded patient understanding of health problems? Again”¦yep.

Comments

Anonymous
The Internet allowed me to check the side effects of a med I was using and realize days earlier that I was having a bad reaction rather than getting the flu. That in turn helped minimize the long-term damage.
Sheila
I used the internet to research hip replacement options. Without the internet, I would have ended up with the cruddy polyethelene hip used by the first doctor I saw.
Instead I got the latest, longest lasting implant, with an anterior approach surgery. Faster recovery, fewer surgeries over the course of my life. I’m in my forties and have kids, and people on both sides of my family die of extreme old age. The plastic hip would probably have cost me years of life or at least led to multiple surgeries with their attendant risks and inconveniences.
The internet saved me from a mediocre orthopod who was too lazy to keep up to date and train on new techniques.
Anonymous
It has benefitted doctors. Patients don’t have to call their doctors for answers to questions that can be obtained from the internet. There is,of course, that hypochondriac who would have called his/her doctor just the same. I have online subscriptions to medical journals that I go to for certain perplexing cases.
I read blogs when I return patients’ calls and they think I really listen to their disorganized
presentation. I like the Internet for its entertainment value. The Internet helps me keep my cool instead of screaming at patients when I’m on the phone with them.
-Doctor H
Anonymous
True story: I went surfing on the Internet after having a rare complication from medication. It helped me a lot to know that this situation was something that just happens sometimes and usually can’t be predicted, vs. “The doctor screwed up!!”
The doctor had explained all this to me himself, but under the circumstances it sort of came across as self-interest – covering his backside, so to speak.
It actually reinforced trust to have it confirmed that he was being honest with me.
Who would have thunk it??
Anonymous
Internet helped me in a number of ways:
1. It helped me to avoid bringing up a stupid question to a doctor by verifying what I was told by a friend (very sure of her knowledge) about a condition I have and finding that this friend misinterpreted what she heard, and there was no need to bother the doctor. In general, I think internet actually saves me time during doctors visits: I have a lot less questions than I would’ve otherwise because I’ve already found the answers. It also helps me to word the questions I do have better and more to the point.
2. It taught me to take information from “TV doctors” with a grain of salt. Without internet I might’ve believed the media and started asking the doctor about what I saw on TV wasting precious office time. Now I routinely verify the information I hear in the media by checking actual source – a study, review of the study in a medical journal, etc.
3. Access to the USPSTF web site taught me what is recommended and what is not so I feel more secure questioning doctors why they order non-recommended tests or just simply saying “no, thanks”.
4. I use internet to routinely look up drugs’ side effects. Once it helped me avoid being put on an unnecessary drug for something that was actually a side effect of a drug I was taking. A switch to an alternative that didn’t have the same side effect took care of the problem.
5. This is vet rather than doctor issue, but who says something similar couldn’t happen with humans? Internet helped me figure out what was wrong with my cat by cross-referencing two key symptoms in Cornell vet school database. The vet didn’t have a clue; after I found the information I went to a different one and he confirmed what I found out (actually this one knew what was wrong the minute I told him of the symptoms).
Lisa
If it wasn’t for the internet I’d still be suffering from Cushing’s Disease, but undiagnosed.
I’ve seen at least 40 doctors in my lifetime but had to diagnose myself. Hmmmn.
Anonymous
Internet searching is not a good substitute for quality communication with your doctor, but as has been pointed out here often, communication requires time that either doctors don’t have, or aren’t willing to provide without additional charges (whereas the internet is “free”). I’d prefer discussing any serious health issues with a knowledgeable professional, but sometimes you have to take what you can get.
Anonymous
In pregnancy, the internet keeps me from worrying about all the little things I don’t need to worry about. When I screened positive for trisomy 18 but the neonatal doctor suggested we NOT get amnio, I was online and found a lot of information. My fears were put to ease after a while, and I did learn a lot about trisomy 18. I ended up having a healthy baby, and was generally calm. Every time I had asked my OB about my screen results, she gave me answers that were more like, “well, you already have such beautiful healthy kids” and “it’s common to hope to have a perfect baby, but that doesn’t always happen.” I always left feeling bad for worrying based on screen results. Later, I worried less and less because of what I read about false positives and how common markers are found on sonograms (we only had slow growth as a marker). So, the internet was more of an axiety buster for me, and kept me from annoying my OB with all the questions.
Blessings!
Dawn
Anonymous
When the patient doesn’t believe me I print out an internet web page that makes my point and then suddenly what I am saying is credible. Incredible.
Anonymous
In the old days, patients got about as much bad information (from friends, from magazines, etc) but had a much harder time getting at good information. It still takes some filtering, but it really does help – it’s just that a lot of the time, the positive effects show up in the people you don’t see because they’ve realized there was nothing to worry about.
For example, this year internet research has saved me a visit to emergency, helped me identify a MUCH cheaper, better tested and less risky treatment than the one originally suggested by my physician, and helped me learn more about [chronic condition] which has at least done a lot to preserve my mental health.
beth
There are some consumer health websites that are designed to combat the overwhelming amount of information and make sure that patients/interested public are getting reliable information. For full disclosure, I worked at the National Library of Medicine and they have a website that follows quality filters for information and it says on the website how they choose what to include or not include. I think this is one of the best uses for our tax dollars–but I am probably biased. And this is just one example of a trustworthy source for health information.
Anyway, I think that the internet can be both a good thing and a bad thing for information–we need to know how to filter the information we find and judge its credibility–and there are great websites and crummy websites out there with health information.
As a medical librarian, this is part of what librarians do. I could say a lot more but I’ll stop now.

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