What do doctors think of patients who find information on the Internet?

[ad_1]

More and more patients are researching health topics, disease symptoms and treatment options on the web. Many doctors misjudge the chance of this development.

More than 50 percent of the resident doctors find informed patients problematic. 45 percent of doctors even believe that patients' own research on medical questions creates excessive expectations. This emerges from an online survey by the Bertelsmann Foundation and the Barmer GEK. Almost a third of the respondents also believe that Internet research confuses patients and affects trust in the doctor. Almost a quarter therefore even recommend that patients prefer not to independently search for health information on the web.

But patients do it anyway. As the EPatient survey 2016 shows, 58 percent of the health surfers surveyed independently search for their information online and 51 percent would like to be informed by their doctor about health-related web services. And so slowly doctors react to their patients' need for information. 56 percent of the medical professionals surveyed by Bertelsmann and Barmer say they offer trustworthy information material in practice. Almost half also point out good sources of information to patients and also almost 50 percent even search for suitable information for their patients on the Internet.

Recognizing only trustworthy sources of information is not that easy. Only 21 percent of the doctors surveyed know the website patienten-information.com of the Medical Center for Quality in Medicine (ÄZQ), which is after all the joint competence center of the Federal Medical Association and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. However, only a third of these doctors believe the patient information on this website is trustworthy, while the trust in Wikipedia is more than twice as large.

Photo: © fotolia.com / Gina Sanders

[ad_2]

AB SMART HEALTH health home & BUILDING REVIEW