Patients using the Internet to obtain health information: How this affects the patient–health professional relationship

Dental patients' use of the Internet

“…1 The Internet is considered to be a signifi cant source of health information for the general public 2 and in particular for those with chronic illnesses, 3 with more than 70,000 websites providing health information. 4 It allows increased access to medical and dental information and can be used for patient self-education, enabling patients to confi rm the information given by their practitioner and to gather additional information.…”

The Internet as a Source of Information for De Quervain's Tendinitis

“…After both reading grade level and quality scores were assigned, the websites were grouped according to search term used, search engine used, order of results (whether the website was found in the first 10 websites of a search or [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], by How would you rate the overall quality the of website in gaining an understanding of the problem? 5-Very good, 4-Good, 3-Fair, 2-Poor, 1-Very poor One point was assigned for each item if the website contained that information.…”

Should Health Care Organizations Use Information Gleaned from Organization-Sponsored Patient Support Groups in Strategic Planning?

“…HCOs can adopt clear-cut policies on how to deal with patients who submit misinformation (to their physician or to online forums). Studies indicate that such situations require an effective communication strategy and often the development of a new set of communication skills for health care professionals [12,13]. It is advisable not to immediately dismiss the information relayed by patients, as patients could put forward potentially useful information [12].…”

“…More generally, validating patients' efforts to seek health information on the internet has been shown to result in improved patient satisfaction and patient-clinician trust [14]. Another approach to dealing with misinformation is to redesign the patient-clinician relationship to suit the organization by choosing one (or a combination) of the following models as a long-term strategy: a professional-centered model, wherein "expert" opinion is relayed to the patient; a patient-centered model, wherein both the health care professional and the patient together evaluate the new information; or a guidance model, wherein the clinician accepts patients' need for new information and seeks out and shares such information with patients in order to guide them [13].…”