This month’s AARP Magazine has a good article about finding trustworthy health and medical information online written by David Kushner. (I tried to find it on their website to provide you with a link, but it doesn’t seem to be there.)
There is some excellent advice — points I share with readers and workshop attendees on a regular basis. And there was one point in the article that was new to me! So I thought I would share it with you.
Turns out, the American College of Physicians and the National Library of Medicine have finally figured out that patients WILL look online for information, even if they prefer patients not do so. (surprise!) In their “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach, they have now developed a “process” to help physicians help their patients find trustworthy information. They call it an “Information Prescription” — and they sell doctors little prescription pads so they can write down a web address or two, plus some keywords for patients to use.
OK. I’ll buy that. Now the question is — how do you find a doctor who buys in to the approach? (I think there may be one in Texas 🙂 !) My experience is that most doctors either hate the fact that patients use the internet, or they suffer it, sometimes not so silently.
But it’s definitely a step in the right direction.
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