Leftover from last week’s reading
Here’s a quick comment on the reading from last week. I talked with my brother about blogs the other night. He said, as a physical therapist, he doesn’t like his patients going online to get medical information. A lot of times they don’t know how to judge the credibility of a site, he said, and they will take the information as gospel. I thought this spoke to the reading from Preece on the medical info communities online. I admitted to him that I had done the same thing and looked something up and then told the doctor I read about it online. [I went to the doctor when I hurt my foot recently.] I think he may have cringed (the doctor, not my brother). Don’t know if this adds anything to the discussion, but thought it was relevant. Would any of you be likely to look up medical information online and share it with a doctor? Preece points out that it can be empowering, as well as dangerous. My problem is I’m a hypchondriac, but as it turns out, the doctor gave me exactly the same information I had found on about.com.
