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NEWS & VIEWS

PATIENTS VALUE ONCOLOGISTS' HELP IN INTERPRETING INTERNET INFORMATION

Internet has huge impact on patients wanting to learn more about their disease.

"Both cancer patients and oncologists agreed that information searching did not reflect a lack of trust in physicians and that it did not affect the patient-doctor relationship," the authors report.

In fact, many doctors welcome their patients' use of the Internet for that purpose, the authors say. This is because oncologists in busy practices may feel they don't have the time or communication skills to translate complex medical realities into plain language for all their patients.

	Impact of Internet Is Huge

TOP Impact of Internet Is...

 
Xueyu Chen, MD, and Lillian L. Siu, MD, of Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, Canada, knew the Internet has had a huge impact on the way the public gets health information, but they wanted to look more closely at the phenomenon. They surveyed 191 inpatients treated at their center over a two-week period and 410 oncologists (including medical, radiation, and surgical oncologists) practicing throughout Canada. The researchers analyzed their use of—and feelings about—the Internet and the popular media as a source of cancer information.

They found almost 86 percent of patients wanted as much information as possible about their illness, but only 54 percent of those felt they received enough information from their doctors and other health care providers. While 83 percent relied on their doctors as their main source of information on their disease, 71 percent also searched for more—with the Internet as their most popular information source. About 88 percent of patients responded that their doctors were willing to discuss the Internet information they'd found with them—and 83 percent felt their doctors spent "a moderate" amount or "a lot" of time doing so.

One particularly significant aspect of this study is that it directly compared physicians' and patients' perceptions of the impact of patients' information searches. About 42 percent of patients felt this information helped them cope with their illness, and only one percent felt it had a negative impact on their ability to cope. Only 15 percent of oncologists surveyed thought this information helped their patients cope and 27 percent thought it interfered with their coping capabilities.

Most patients and oncologists thought this activity had no impact on the quality of their relationship. But 21 percent of patients felt that it strengthened the doctor-patient relationship compared with eight percent of oncologists. And six percent of patients and nine percent of oncologists reported patient Internet usage had a negative impact on this relationship.

Several recently published studies have pointed out serious limitations in medical information gleaned from Internet sites, broadcast media, and print media. Not surprisingly, only 15 percent of oncologists thought medical information from these sources was always or often correct, and only six percent thought patients using these sources always or often interpreted the information correctly.

One pattern that appears in these data is that oncologists have a lower opinion of the quality and value of information found by their patients from such sources than do the patients themselves.

"Evidence that patients value this information and believe it has a positive impact on their coping abilities and their relationship with their oncologist highlights the importance of patient education and discussion of patients' information sources," says Terri Ades, RN, MS, AOCN, American Cancer Society Director of Quality of Life/Health Promotion Strategy.

"Oncologists and oncology nurses should realize that the time they spend guiding their patients to high-quality information and discussing that information with them is, at least in their patient's view, very well spent."

"We know that, through the American Cancer Society's information-providing channels, patients do want more information that they can use to help them make some of the difficult health care decisions they face," Ades adds. "We strive to provide reliable information that patients and their oncology team can trust to be accurate. This sometimes involves helping them sort through the volumes of information available to them from other sources."

"There are good sources of information available that oncology professionals can guide their patients to for the information they seek."

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