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As people turn to the Internet for medical advice, doctors urge patients to only use credible sites as reference and a tool for discussion.
The first place many people turn to when they feel sick isn’t their doctor - it’s the Internet. Online a person can find an explanation of an illness and what they can do to treat it. While medical officials say this does not constitute a trip to the doctor’s office, online research can help a patient and doctor begin the conversation towards treatment.
“They go to the doctor better informed with lots of questions, and we like that,” says Dr. Charles Henley, president of the Tulsa Osteopathic Medical Society, of patients who research their illness and symptoms. “The ideal patient is someone who can engage in their own health.”
While there are many benefits to going online to research an ailment, Henley says many sites can overwhelm or misdirect people.
Dr. H. Dwight Hardy, III with Mingo Valley Medical Group says while there are many credible sites like www.webmd.com online, there are also many that “lack accuracy, are not credentialed and are written without any governing or editing from a professional or credentialed individual.”
Visit the local hospitals’ sites and other well-known online sources that offer medical research options, provide links to medical articles and give tips for healthy living.
As the online home for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the components of the Department of Health and Human Services, this site provides topical links and stories, as well as information on diseases, workplace safety, healthy living, injuries, environmental health and emergency information.
This site allows people to find information based on research and knowledge found through the components of the Mayo Clinic, a not-for-profit medical practice caring for patients with complex illnesses with clinic and hospital locations in three states.
As a popular online health resource, www.webmd.com provides medical information in laymen’s terms and other online facets such as tips for healthy living, medical warning signs, medical news and other pertinent information.
A vast online database containing a section for patients that relays information gathered by more than 4,000 physicians who serve as authors and editors to the site’s articles.
