In many ways, that aptly summarises what we, in the Emergency Department, think when a patient hoves into view clutching a sheaf of papers listing a summary of their symptoms and the diagnosis reached.
One can type into the search box a, relatively, innocuous symptom and be presented with the absolute worse case scenarios.
Take headache for example. Many of our patients assume the worst. It is a common human trait. So, rather than searching for 'headache' as a standalone, they will search for 'brain tumour', and then it becomes much easier to shoe-horn their other symptoms into that diagnosis.
As a species, we often assume the worst, the Internet allows us to do just that.
I remember with great joy the middle-aged man who entered the department one morning convinced that he had Ebola (Ebola haemorrhagic fever)
He had reached this striking diagnosis by googling his symptoms - classically viral in nature. He was convinced he would die. He had never travelled out of the UK, in fact I remain convinced that he had never left the confines of the town where he lived. The Internet had given him this knowledge.
Or there was the patient who attended with abdominal pain. 'I was reading on the Internet, and my symptoms are like a ruptured Ovarian cyst'.
Indeed they may have been, had the patient in question been a female rather than a male!
Lest I give the impression that I think that the ability to gain knowledge is a bad thing, I don't. Not at all. There are many instances of the patient coming to the right conclusion after a Google search.
And, of course, we are also them. Myself and Dr Dan were presented with a diagnostic dilemma after removing some kind of 'creature' from the 'bottom' of a young woman who had travelled the world.
A quick Google search revealed the culprit, obviously after Dr Dan had fainted and I had vomited, and our treatment options became clear.
We can be, somewhat, irritated when a patient or their family arrive telling us what is wrong with them, and what investigations we need to do. Particularly when those investigations are rare, weird or downright expensive.
There is a big difference between the information written by diagnosticians and physicians, and those written by someone who is neither.
The Internet can be a useful tool, but the ability to search for a meaningful diagnosis can be more difficult.
Read other related questions on Quora:
- Do you think a time will come when Internet will efface the need of Doctors in the world?
- Where did people go for health information before the Internet?
- Shoul I make a self-diagnosis using the internet before seeing a doctor?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2etuyc7
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