“There is a stranger in the clinic room, and it is not your patient. This stranger is a multifaceted, opinionated entity with likely conflict-of-interest. This new acquaintance has already spoken to your patient and influenced the direction of this visit in the form of health statistics, symptom explanations, and feared complications. Now your patient wants to know what you think. In an age when patients will often have diagnosed their problem before they walk through a clinic door, the provider may start to feel overwhelmed by a third entrant into the patient-provider dialogue: the elusive online source.”
Article
Suzanne MacFarland, Clinical Correlations, 15 October 2010
