Are Doctors Losing Their Relevance Due to Social Media Health Sites?

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Northerner

Northerner

Admin (Retired)
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
A very interesting article in today's Huffington post about how sites (like ours) are helping to change the patient/doctor relationship.

What do patients get out of social media and is it making our physicians increasingly irrelevant?

What does this trend of increasingly educated patients mean for the doctor-patient relationship?

How can doctors make themselves more relevant to a growing number of educated health care consumers?
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riva-greenberg/are-doctors-losing-their_b_596060.html
 
If it were not for sites like this, and the media in general, friends and other contacts, I would get no information from my GP, s for me this site is necessary. I even recently did a course my GP said did not exist. Knowledge is power, but not when it all belongs to one person. Without the releven information, how are we expected to care for our selves?
 
If anything I think social networking and sites like this can actually increase the relevance of GPs and help patients get more out of that relationship. They help you learn more about a condition and know what questions to ask. I think networking with others helps patients get more out of their HCPs as they can then be equipped to take a more active role in their consultations, rather than it just being the doctor with the knowledge doing all the talking.
 
Good doctors will always be relevant.

Hopefully, it'll just be the bad ones that will be made irrelevant.

Andy
 
Very true Andy and Aymes, my GP is absolutely excellent. She's a very good listener, and doesn't rush you in consultations. She also accepts that I may know more about my diabetes than her and is happy to learn from my experiences. I wish they could all be like her, but even in the same practise, there are others who are the opposite.
 
I know my GP is not entirely happy I keep looking up things on the internet and reading books but it is something she is having to become used to. I have always looked up things and remember receiving a proper telling off back in the 80s because I had gone to the reference section of the local library and looked up "ulcers". Scared the life out of myself because I read up on gastric as well as duodenal and the treatment was different. For one, the encyclopedia talked about cutting away half your stomach, for example. I went to see my doc, not the current one, and he went ape. Told me a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, he was the trained doctor, blah, blah, blah. Things had moved on since the encyclopedia was written (fair enough) and the wonder drug Cimetidine did away with the need for such drastic measures. I should not read that stuff. I am giggling remembering his reaction.

Times have changed. With the internet and forums such as this, I can be more up to date than my doc.

But, there is also quite a lot of unreliable stuff on the internet too so I don't rely solely on articles but these forums allow me to ask questions and learn from real experiences.

Funnily enough I have an appointment for Monday with my GP to discuss medication based on what I read in Diabetes for Dummies. I wrote to her and she said to go in and talk about it. I intend to take the book in, show her what I had read, and ask would she just ignore it. Now I know something, I can't ignore it. (In case you are wondering, it is about taking beta blockers and a fluazide tablet for high blood pressure together. DforD says not to as they cause diabetes. 10 months after starting on the beta blocker - I have diabetes.
 
My doctor hates it that I don't automatically accept her word as gospel and go off and do my own research. But I don't care, I'm a firm believer in taking charge of my own treatment, I've been at the mercy of the medical profession all my life for one reason or another and I'm firmly convinced I'd be dead by now if I'd sat quietly and let them get on with it. My mother was of that generation that believed the doctor knows best and never questioned anything they chose to do to me. Some of the things they tried were almost medieval and many treatments were worse than the disease I was fighting (in this case exzema). It was a bitter lesson, but nowadays I question everything and if the nitwit can't justify it to me, I'll do my own research before agreeing to whatever it is. It's my life, my body and my health, so if she doesn't like it that's just too bad isn't it?

I think it's a healthy thing to question the treatment you receive, the more you know about it the better your chances, especially with chronic conditions like exzema or diabetes where treatments are likely to be lifelong and the long term effects can be horrendous*. It's best to know what you're facing.

* It's becoming increasingly clear that many of my current health problems have been caused by the long terms effects of treatments received in childhood for a condition the doctors just couldn't cope with. I wasn't quite as bad as the Boy in the Bubble, but it was close and medics used to try things out of sheer desperation. If you fancy a few nightmares, I'll tell you about it sometime.:D
 
I saw my dr yesterday and he gave me a fact sheet about type 2 diabetes, then told me to cut out white sugar in tea/coffee and food in general, he also told me to make a long appointment with the practice nurse to get everything explained????? what he says to me i use as a guide then follow up online on sites like this (thank you) :D
 
I think doctors, specifically GPs, are losing their relevance but not due to sites like these. I think they are making themselves less relevant by refusing to go to people's homes, refusing to work evenings and weekends, and generally making themselves more remote from most people's experience. I know I hardly see my GP since they do not work at a time when I can see them and now have introduced some ridiculous system where you phone and leave a message asking for an appointment and they ring back and decide on the phone if they need to see you. Specialists are almost as bad, my last 2 eye appointments have been changed to times I cannot attend, and I have had to reschedule meaning months of delay between appointments. Why wait weeks or months to see a doctor, when you can get answers within minutes on here? In the abscence of a doctor, it is inevitable that people will find somewhere else to ask their questions.
 
scootdevon said:
I saw my dr yesterday and he gave me a fact sheet about type 2 diabetes, then told me to cut out white sugar in tea/coffee and food in general, he also told me to make a long appointment with the practice nurse to get everything explained????? what he says to me i use as a guide then follow up online on sites like this (thank you) :D
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My GP gave me a long list of negatives when I was diagnosed. I swapped it for a list of positives for example:
Don't eat sugary food changed to eat more fruit and vege
Don't drink tea and coffee changed to drink more water
Don't watch too much TV changed to get more active

As for talking to the practice nures, last time I saw her, she spent an hour telling me all her problems, so I walked out and made an appointment with the other nurse and the person who followed me in met me a few days later and appologised for thinking I was monopolising the nurse as the same thing had happened to her!
 
Caroline said:
...As for talking to the practice nures, last time I saw her, she spent an hour telling me all her problems, so I walked out and made an appointment with the other nurse and the person who followed me in met me a few days later and appologised for thinking I was monopolising the nurse as the same thing had happened to her!
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LOL! Perhaps she thought you would fee you didn't have it so bad if you heard what she had to put up with! Interesting technique! :D
 
Northerner said:
LOL! Perhaps she thought you would fee you didn't have it so bad if you heard what she had to put up with! Interesting technique! :D
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Hadn't looked at it like that, but I still think she is paid to look after me. Perhaps I am wrong in thinking I am the patient?
 
I like the positives Caroline.

And sorry, but the tale about your nurse made me laugh!!
 
Caroline said:
As for talking to the practice nures, last time I saw her, she spent an hour telling me all her problems, so I walked out and made an appointment with the other nurse and the person who followed me in met me a few days later and appologised for thinking I was monopolising the nurse as the same thing had happened to her!
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oooh Caroline! Spooky!! I had a practice nurse like that until last year when they finally employed a diamond!! The new nurse went through all the diabetics at the practice like a dose of salts when she started. Reviews, tests, bloods everything!
I was so happy the other lady was gone - she was as much use as a chocolate teapot! Wonder if its the same one??? Lol
Gloria
 
Yup, well good idea if you ask me. The NHS is always telling us (it's staff) how important patient compliance is and patient complience (ie taking their meds the right way at the right time) is only gonna be improved if people know more about what it is they're up against, why they take the meds and what they do. We're (as in us patients) supposed to be commended for taking an interest in and responsibility for our treatment, but too often professionals seem jelous of thier specialist knowledge.
Now when can i get somebody to write me a prescription for Test Strips and Metformin on line? Legally....

Rachel
 
Well, I saw my doctor today to talk about what I had read in Diabetes for Dummies and was half expecting a telling off. It didn't happen and she said she is glad when patients educate themselves. I made some comment about not being an expert but she said that we are, we know far more about our conditions than a GP and any doubts or concerns I should go in and talk to her. It was a good appointment and she has said I can stop taking one of the meds that clashes with another one. Go back in 3 months for a blood pressure check to see if there has been a big difference.

She also congratulated me on the excellent blood test results.

Wish all doctors were like her. Or more importantly, I wish the other doctor in the 2 doctor practice was more like her!!!
 
MargB said:
...She also congratulated me on the excellent blood test results.

Wish all doctors were like her. Or more importantly, I wish the other doctor in the 2 doctor practice was more like her!!!
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Sounds really good Marg! 🙂 My doctor is like that, she speaks to me like an intelligent person, not a stupid child like some appear to do. Great that you have been able to reduce your meds too. I'm trying really hard this month to get my BP down so that my doctor might decrease my meds for it.
 
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