Doctor Google

[Deleted User]

An Opinion piece from The Guardian:

Google search vs doctor diagnosis – always an imperfect balance
http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2015/jun/19/google-search-doctor-diagnosis-imperfect-balance-bronte-doyne-cancer

Mod B

frogmorton

Interesting......

Sadly the story of the teenager with liver cancer is familiar to me; so many Drs do not look for cancer in young people resulting in either the wrong treatment or treatment delayed too long. Teenage Cancer Trust are advocating a 3 strikes and you're out policy for GPs. Meaning that if a teenager presents 3 times, (remember you have to literally drag teenagers to the doctors!) they should be referred.

I agree that people do use the internet to sort of 'diagnose', but it's not really Dr Google who diagnoses Google is only a search engine.
Once you have put your symptoms into the search you can then look for reliable sources. For instance coming here to Arthritis Care if you have joint pain, (like I and probably most of us did ). Personally I have never really looked at any sites other than this one and Arthritis Research UK now we have NHS choices too.

As the article says some GPs aren't best pleased that the patient may have an idea about what is wrong before they visit. I expect it undermines them a bit and also might 'force' them to investigate something which they are pretty sure it isn't, (an AA repair person once said to me that he hated going out on a call to people who said "it's the such and such mate" because he felt obliged to spend an hour, possibly in the dark/rain, proving it wasn't 'such and such' before fixing the real problem.

The thing is that the internet is far more accessible than a rushed GP who has only a few minutes for you.

Very interesting anyway thanks

Toni xxx

Jen

Yes its a shame the NHS Direct site was closed, we have a walk in clinic when patients can't get an appointment with their own doctor's surgery quickly enough.

Patient UK is another site Toni but its not a self diagnosis site its a medical / patient information and has community forums like this one, only it covers all health problems. http://patient.info/

Something that has been set up but isn't very well promoted is the Sound Doctor. Not sure if they have Arthritis included in the system yet.

http://www.thesounddoctor.org/