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Question: My son had what seemed to be an infection in his mouth. I took him to a walk-in medical clinic, and the doctor there had a look. The doctor took out his smartphone and started doing something on it, then announced his choice of antibiotic to prescribe. The doctor, by looking it up on his phone, kind of made me lose confidence in him. Was he just Googling? Is there some special site that medical professionals can access? Why didn’t he just know what to prescribe? My wife says it’s the same thing as if he looked in a book. But the use of the smartphone feels different. I mean, I could have looked at WebMD myself!
Answer: The doctor was likely accessing one of the many new medical resources that are now available online. But you shouldn’t be alarmed when your doctor turns to the Internet before writing a prescription. In fact, it’s actually a good thing.
“It means the doctor wants to be right as opposed to relying on his memory – memory is fallible,” explains Dr. David Juurlink, a staff physician and drug-safety researcher at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
It’s also a positive sign he looked up the information while you were watching him.
That indicates the doctor felt comfortable admitting he doesn’t know everything, “and that is a trait every physician should have,” says Dr. Juurlink. “The three most powerful words a doctor can say are: ‘I don’t know’.”
Indeed, a cautious approach – and the willingness to double-check – reduces the risk of the doctor making a mistake that could jeopardize your health.
From your question, it’s clear that you feel very uncomfortable with the doctor relying on the Internet. It’s true there’s a lot of junk on the web. However, it’s also an invaluable source of data if you know where to look and you have the expertise to discern what’s reliable.
“Twenty years ago a doctor would have to pull a book from a shelf – and that book could easily have been out-of-date,” says Dr. Juurlink. “Now, in a matter of seconds, we can access information that is current and accurate. So why not use it?”
It’s impossible to say which specific website, or app, the doctor consulted to select an antibiotic for your son.
“There are many good websites that doctors can use as resources – some of them are free, and some of them are not,” says Dr. Juurlink. “Every doctor has a list of sites that they are comfortable with, that they know how to navigate and they have found to be useful.”
In some cases, physicians are given special access to certain sites through their professional organizations or hospital affiliations.
Dr. Juurlink says one of his favorite online resources, provided by way of Sunnybrook, is called UpToDate, an excellent resource that contains reference materials for physicians. “It is a spectacular resource,” he says. “If you can think of a condition, it’s in UPTODATE.”
(If you’re curious about other web-based resources that are popular among physicians, you may want to check out a recent article published Nov. 17 in the Wall Street Journal, Health-Care Apps That Doctors Use.)
As a specialist in drug safety, Dr. Juurlink knows a lot about prescription medications. Yet he is the first to acknowledge: “There are more things I don’t know about drugs than I do know.” And today’s Internet allows him to fill in those knowledge gaps when a specific question arises.
In many respects, the recent expansion of on-line medical resources can be seen as an encouraging development that has the potential to reduce medical errors.
So don’t be annoyed the next time your physician reaches for a smartphone. There is a good chance the doctor is tapping into the latest, most up-to-date, medical information that applies to you.
Paul Taylor, Sunnybrook’s Patient Navigation Advisor, provides advice and answers questions from patients and their families, relying heavily on medical and health experts. His blog Personal Health Navigator is reprinted on Healthy Debate with the kind permission of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Email your questions to AskPaul@sunnybrook.ca and follow Paul on Twitter @epaultaylor
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Thanks for this, Mr. Taylor. Sadly, expertise and authority seem to be held in a time-trap, yet to make the transition to the present day, where smartphones are so ubiquitous and reliable that the idea of rote recall and memorization is antiquated. I actually wrote a similar piece last week, but from the perspective of a university instructor. I teach philosophy to undergrads and often assign debates. “As I’m outlining my expectations I encourage students to use their devices for the rebuttal portion. It never fails, I always see looks of relief from the majority, just as I hear the keen among them question, almost to themselves, ‘But isn’t that cheating?’ My short answer is “No.” We’re cheating students of learning resources when we expect nothing short of rote recall and memorization. Smartphones enable students to respond to views that they didn’t anticipate and prepare for. Knowing that the information they need is right in front of them, should they get lost or feel pressured, takes a lot of the heat off of them to retain knowledge that they do not need to store, allows for spontaneity, and it also taps into a tremendous learning resource that is always there for them.” There is an obvious parallel with respect to physicians, and other experts.
(Follow me @Doyle_EA and/or read my blog at http://www.elizabethdoyle.weebly.com)