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and keep info for your patients
6
of the best doctor-approved
medical websites
WebMD.com,
the most popular health website out there, provides
easy to understand information on a comprehensive
list of conditions, medications, tests and procedures
MedEffect (www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/medeff/index_e.html)
keeps doctors and patients up to date on Canadian
product advisories, warnings and recalls and also
includes an online adverse-reaction report system
Familydoctor.org
contains straightforward, pamphlet-style information
on medical conditions and topics
Mayoclinic.com
is supremely easy to read. It includes user-friendly
features like healthy living guides and an "ask
a specialist" section
Medlineplus.gov
contains a large medical encyclopedia with figures
and illustrations, info on drugs and herbal/supplemental
medicine, and a Merriam-Webster medical dictionary.
Great for patients who want some more complex,
detailed medical information
Drugs.com
has tons of info on prescription drugs, including
OTCs and alternative meds, and a "Drug Interactions
Checker"
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Whenever a big health story makes
headlines — like the recent rosiglitazone scare
—your net-savvy patients scurry to their computer
to find out what's what. But as anybody who's spent
much time on the web can attest, the quality of the
information on the seemingly endless number of medical
sites out there is variable to say the least. A bit
of guidance from you will steer your patients away from
the charlatans and towards physician-approved sites
with reliable medical information.
SPELL
IT OUT
Dr Raymond Woosley, University of Arizona's former dean
of medicine and a prominent medical-website researcher,
worries about what patients are gleaning from the net.
"What concerns me are the unregulated claims out there,"
he says. "Patients can read about untested treatments,
not understanding the information quality. A lot of
it looks technical and medical, but in fact is gibberish."
Sometimes it's not the website,
it's the patient. Poor health literacy means patients
often don't understand what they're reading. Internet
newbies often simply don't know how to find decent sites
in the first place. Ottawa GP and internet-enthusiast
Robert Eaton likes to give his net-phobic patients a
helping hand. "I write the diagnosis on paper so that
patients can go and search it themselves," he says.
"In some cases, since I have internet access in the
examination room, I like to do an internet search right
there with my patient."
SITE
SAVVY
Try to steer patients with a manageable number of sites
to visit — preferably ones that go easy on the
technical jargon, suggests Mary Brown, PhD, a health
communications investigator at the University of Arizona.
You should always take a gander at any websites before
suggesting them to patients, even if they've been recommended
by a reputable source, adds Dr Woosley.
When patients come to you with
off-the-wall ideas that you suspect were gleaned from
some shady website, try to help them improve their appraisal
process, suggests Dr Brown. The process can be boiled
down to a few key heuristics for your patients. "Get
patients to consider a website's source," advises Dr
Brown. "Who's running the site? Is it government, academic,
or commercial?" Remind them that if a site is trying
to sell them something, the info will be far from unbiased.
Caution against Kevin Trudeau-style gimmicks and sites
where the ads are more prominent than the content.
"Doctors should at least question
patients to assess the kind of information they're seeing,"
says Dr Brown. By just discussing their browsing habits,
you might prevent a patient from going on a wild goose
chase looking for miracle cures. A simple question can
prevent patients from using harmful treatments —
particularly OTC or herbal remedies — that they
might never mention to you otherwise.
By discussing some trustworthy
health sites and providing them with a few links, you
may find that when patients have better information,
treatment compliance rates soar.
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