Comments on: Poll: Should doctors use Wikipedia for medical information?

By: Undie Spot

Undie Spot — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:54:29 +0000

What’s most interesting about this report is that it’s hard to find any physicians denying it!

Maybe they are too busy consulting Wikipedia, the new standard of care.

I’m going to Wikipedia and see what they say about plantars warts right this second.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:36:00 +0000

"50 percent of physicians who go online for professional reasons use Wikipedia to answer health questions"

Kind of a useless statistic right there. It would be nice to know what percentage of their searches were on Wikipedia, and what they were looking up. The last time I looked something medical up on Wikipedia, it was because I wanted a one-sentence answer ("17-OH-progesterone is used to prevent pre-term labor.")

Most of the time, I use UpToDate or an even better source, but I would fall into that 50%, because I've done it before. If a physician uses it for actual clinical recommendations, then yes, that's pathetic.

By: William

William — Tue, 12 May 2009 06:13:00 +0000

The funny thing is, the more doctors use wikipedia, the more accurate it gets, simply because there are more people confirming the information.
Bad information can glide by when it’s not seen, but if a page is constantly observed, it’s harder to maliciously manipulate simply because someone will see.
By no means is wikipedia authoritative or detailed enough for doctors. But it’s a great starting point for information. additionally, wikipedia is the major resourse patients are using to learn about diseases. For that reason alone, doctors should at least be actively monitoring wikipedia- in order to ensure correct information, and to understand what information patients have available to them.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:34:00 +0000

The issue of how complex the question is paramount. Simple stuff, I’m sure Wiki is fine, and that’s how most of my medical colleagues use it.

One massive advantage that wiki/google has over legit licensed sources is that access is easy – bigger in fact than price – and expedience of the search engine. I think this is really over-looked. At my institution – a large academic one – it is cumbersome to get to uptodate even, and sources like statref! have crappy search functions. A few extra clicks may seem trivial, but those clicks add up over the course of a long day spent, sadly, on a computer.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 12 May 2009 00:37:00 +0000

Any source needs to be considered in context, including the author’s agenda; for any subject (including medicine), different experts may have different opinions on the subject. Such differences in opinions may show up in different rates of particular treatments for the same condition in different regions or hospitals, not explained by demographic or economic differences, for example.

By: Alison Cummins

Alison Cummins — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:53:00 +0000

Was anyone polled distinguishing between wikipedia.org and askdrwiki.com? (Were you?) The latter supposedly has input from MDs only.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:09:00 +0000

Wikipedia is a toy! One would hope physicians savvy enough to look up a topic online would be savvy enough to use reliable sources, like PubMed, Merck Manual, etc.

By: Kairol Rosenthal

Kairol Rosenthal — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:51:00 +0000

As a patient who researches hard my own cancer treatment options, I never even click on wikipedia for my own research. This is troubling info and I will be sure to ask my docs if they use wikipedia, and if so how. I hope they are as stringent as I am.

By: Emily

Emily — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:13:00 +0000

I’m not a doctor and can’t vouch for how it works, but I’ve seen this site where doctors collaborate getting noticed.

http://sermo.com/

I’m not a fan of Wikipedia as anything more than a starting place to generate ideas. Maybe in that light it’s not so bad?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 11 May 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Wow– this is shocking to me as an internist. Using Wikipedia is an abdication of duty when there are so much better sources of data out there (even if more expensive or less user friendly). To the commenter who mentioned UpToDate not being free– consider it a cost of doing business, then, to have a reliable source of information, whether it be a Harrison’s tome or an online database. But Wikipedia? With no quality control, and as mentioned in the article, easily manipulated? It’s an abdication of duty to use a subpar information source in the care of patients.