Online health: Is this the end of family medicine?

Roger Ladouceur

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Online health: Is this the end of family medicine?
Robert W. Shepherd

Published on: 27 August 2013

Published on: (27 August 2013)

Online health: Is this the end of family medicine?
Robert W. Shepherd, family physician
No. Millions of Canadians don't have a family doctor. If a person gets credible and valid information from a website linked to a responsible organization, and that person invites the doctor to participate in his or her (henceforth abbreviated "his") health care, more power to him -- it won't take much effort for us to help that person.
Dr. Ladouceur talked about advanced cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,...
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No. Millions of Canadians don't have a family doctor. If a person gets credible and valid information from a website linked to a responsible organization, and that person invites the doctor to participate in his or her (henceforth abbreviated "his") health care, more power to him -- it won't take much effort for us to help that person.
Dr. Ladouceur talked about advanced cancer, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, myocardial infarction, osteorarthrosis, Alzheimer's disease, leukemia and cystic fibrosis, and asked, "How can a physician who is not an expert in any of these diseases ... continue to be relevant?" What I do is to ask my friendly librarian to find articles about the topic (big RCT's are great, but I often just read a recent review article.) I study the articles, then ask the patient to return to review my assessment of the issue.
Some people don't seek information online. Some people get online information which is misleading. The doctor can help uninformed or misinformed patients. The patients who come back to review my assessment of a question they brought up after an online search thank me for my effort and opinion.
The UBC Faculty of Medicine sends medical students to work with me and my patients. Most of the students have a degree in science, and they all have access to all the information available about any disease. The students report that they appreciate the guidance I give them. It takes most people about 10,000 hours of work to get good at something, including family medicine. If medical students appreciate the gestalt of a family practitioner, so do patients.
Do not despair.
Robert Shepherd
Conflict of Interest:
None declared
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Competing Interests: None declared.