Welcome to the Nexus of Ethics, Psychology, Morality, Philosophy and Health Care

Welcome to the nexus of ethics, psychology, morality, technology, health care, and philosophy

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

How is the doctor-patient relationship changing? It’s going electronic.

By Suzanne Allard Levingston
The Washington Post
Originally posted April 27, 2015

Here are two excerpts:

Almost three-quarters of American adults use the Internet to search online for health information each year, according to the Pew Research Center. While patients are digging through new information, so are doctors. A “tsunami of knowledge” from hundreds of journals pours over doctors, says Jack Cochran, executive director of the Permanente Federation.

All this information changes the culture. “Doctors say they’re taught to know things that others don’t,” said Dave deBronkart, a cancer survivor and advocate for patient engagement. Today, thanks to online searches and communities, a patient may know about advances before a doctor does.

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Not only should you read your electronic health record, you should check for errors. “Most people’s records contain mistakes,” deBronkart said. His 2009 blog about mistakes in his Google Health record led to a front-page story in the Boston Globe and a career as an advocate known as e-Patient Dave. (Google Health, a free service intended to help consumers pull together medical and wellness information, was discontinued in 2013 because it failed to generate broad interest.)

The entire article is here.