Introduction
Patients have questioned the effectiveness of biomedicine since the start of the Internet era. Free access to information is used to be considered as an incontestable benefit. Still, there is a question of how reliable online information could be. Lay people cannot fully understand medical issues, distinguish between peer-revised and unreliable sources. The number of members of online health groups increases, and these are the communities where unreliable data could be easily and quickly shared. It affects patient-provider relationships as patients try to participate in decision-making having no professional competence. I think nothing could be done with the growth of a number of online health communities and patients’ deep concern in biomedicine; the challenge is to deal with these phenomena to minimize their negative effects.
Main body
I have looked over the Diabetes Support Group site and may say that the main concern of patients is the everyday management of the disease. There are a lot of messages from newcomers putting the simplest questions, asking for advice (DSG). People who are not used to living with diabetes, feel at a loss. Hilliard et al. state that “diabetes self-management is complex and demanding, and isolation and burnout are common experiences; the Internet provides opportunities for people with diabetes to connect with one another to address these challenges” (261). The main point patients try to achieve is soothing, they look for online social support.
Online health groups allow people to benefit from support. It could be both important for the sick and their caregivers. With online communication, these categories do not feel isolated in managing everyday demands. A member of a community does not need expertise and knowledge to calm one’s companion. A patient benefits from online support until the moment he or she starts considering an interlocutor as a medical authority. According to Centola and van de Rijt, “little is known about how people select their health contacts in these virtual domains” (19). Most of the group members are not medical doctors. These are people interested in biomedicine, but their practical disease management tips are not to be followed.
I think laypeople cannot fully understand medical literature, and their ability to make “informed decisions” is arguable. A lot of patients get interested in biomedicine as the internet provides an enormous quantity of sources. Social media do not stop generating healthcare-related information, but its credibility is a challenge (Hajli et al. 238). If assuming the information is credible, it should be understood correctly. Biomedicine issues need a complicated approach and scientific background. The price of wrong self-made decisions is own health or the health of other members of the online group who follow the advice of a false expert.
The pro-active position of patients could be beneficial regarding following official treatment protocol, not in decision making. The situation seems optimistic, as Rupert et al.claim that “participants described online health communities as supplementing information from healthcare providers, whom they perceived as too busy for detailed discussion. Almost all participants shared OHC content with HCPs” (326). It should be stated, that health-seeking behaviors exclude amateur performance.
The number of patients who have extensively researched their ailments grows. Some healthcare providers believe that biomedicine information from online communities has a negative influence on the relationships between patient-provider (Rupert et al. 326). From professional ethics, there is no way for irritation. All necessary explanations should be given regardless of the meaningfulness of questions. If handled properly, people with deep medicine interests could be transformed into the most attentive patients.
There are a lot of dissatisfied with modern biomedicine patients, and all the more people seem active in their health care. Free access to information drives the situation. There are a few reasons for patients’ dissatisfaction, and none of them is connected with the decrease of medical competence level. First of all, the flow of data, instead of making people more informed and confident, embarrasses them. It irritates. Secondly, a lot of people get used to relying on “an opinion from the internet”; usually, some member of an online health group becomes an authority. The differences in approaches between a doctor and an internet companion put a question of whom to believe first. Someone has to be ignored, and the necessity to choose annoys. On whole, free access to information and lack of critical reasoning cause dissatisfaction with biomedicine.
Conclusion
How to deal with the patients arguing the effectiveness of biomedicine is an acute question nowadays. The amount of data, accessible online is going to grow. Also, the online health communities, sharing among others unreliable information, gain power. The challenge is to protect patients and to persuade them that online groups could serve only for social support. Monitoring of popular groups’ content could be helpful. The problem concerns the low level of critical reasoning. The right approach would be to pay attention to its development starting with elementary school pupils. To overcome the dissatisfaction and to regain the trust to biomedicine, healthcare providers should take their time explaining and dispelling myths from the Internet.
Works Cited
Centola, Damon, and Arnout van de Rijt. “Choosing Your Network: Social Preferences in an Online Health Community.” Social Science & Medicine, vol. 125, 2015, pp. 19-31.
Diabetes Support Group, 2018. Web.
Hajli, Nick M., et al. “Credibility of Information in Online Communities.” Journal of Strategic Marketing, vol. 23, no. 3, 2015, pp. 238-253.
Hilliard, Marisa E., et al. “The Emerging Diabetes Online Community.” Current Diabetes Reviews, vol. 11, no. 4, 2015, pp. 261-272.
Rupert, Douglas J., et al. “Perceived Healthcare Provider Reactions to Patient and Caregiver Use of Online Health Communities.” Patient Education and Counseling, vol. 96, no. 3, 2014, pp. 320-326.