Journal
DERMATOLOGIC THERAPY
Volume 33, Issue 6, Pages -Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/dth.14098
Keywords
dermatologist; Internet; physician-patient relationship; skin diseases; social media
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The traditional patient-physician relationship is being changed by the patients' searches for medical information on the Internet and in social media (SM). Freely available medical information online bears enormous potential but also holds dangers. In this cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study, the patients' motivation, preferences and unmet needs when searching for medical information online and the impact on the patient-physician relationship were assessed using Spearman's correlation coefficients, chi(2)-tests and paired t-tests. Among 460 participants, 82.4% had already used the Internet/SM to gain medical information, but in only 9.4% their dermatologists had raised this topic. Online search for medical information was associated with female gender (P= .048), a higher skin-related burden (P= .020), higher level of education (P= .072), higher income (P= .019), anxiety (P= .004), and adnexal skin diseases (P= .043). For 16.1% of patients, the Internet/SM was their most important source of medical information; 81.4% deemed the impact of their online searches on their patient-physician relationship as neutral, 16.0% as positive, 2.6% as negative. The patients' top three unmet needs were Online consultations, Professional content on YouTube and Chat opportunities. Online search for medical information is a very important topic for most dermatology patients but it may not be adequately addressed by dermatologists. Our results indicate that from the patients`perspective such online searches do not have a significant impact on patient-physician relationship.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available