Summary: “I can’t tell you how many people have flung this Facebook item at me since last night, starting with my wife. :-),” writes my friend e-Patient Dave deBronkart on the e-patients.net blog of the Society for Participatory Medicine. “It’s already approaching 25,000 shares. … Listen, people: Googling does not mean I think I’m a doctor. It’s a sign of being an engaged, empowered ‘e-patient.’ I partner with great doctors – I don’t tell them what to do. And they welcome me doing it. I personally am completely opposed to a patient going in and saying ‘I’ve decided I have condition X, and I want you to prescribe 42mg QID of medication Y.’ I mean, have you ever seen the things medical students have to learn to get their license?? But I’m all in favor of a patient saying, ‘I have symptoms A and B, and from what I can tell from websites J and Q, that sounds like it could be M.’ Explain your thinking, identify your source, and try to solve the diagnostic puzzle together: Collaborate. The flip side is that it’s demonstrably wrong for a doctor to insist that their diagnosis must be right; the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine has lots of data on that, and the National Academy of Medicine recently published a big report on it. (See S.P.M. patient member Peggy Zuckerman’s recent spot on the NBC News item about that report.)” It’s a great read about how patients take part in their care, by e-Patient Dave deBronkart, The truth about that “your Googling and my medical degree” mug, e-Patients.net
