Med students get medical info from the same place you do!
If you’ve ever admitted to your doctor that you were using Google to check on your symptoms or treatments, I’ll bet he rolled his eyes or slowly shook his head.
And he may have even warned you to stop consulting with “Dr. Google.” Patients look up so many health concerns (and then, of course, worry about them), that it even has a name — “cyberchondria!”
But there’s a whole group of people who regularly consult Google with their medical questions — and you may not believe who they are.
I’m talking about medical students. That’s right — those studying to be doctors, who either don’t have the time or patience to be consulting their textbooks.
But as crazy as that sounds, there’s something else going on that’s even more bizarre.
Google, it turns out, isn’t the only Internet shortcut being used by future docs and even those who are already practicing.
For today’s med school students — kids who were playing with iPads as toddlers instead of a rattle — some new research has uncovered that Google is the go-to place to answer their questions.
In fact, a recent survey by the publishers of Merck Manuals (a reference book for doctors) found that med students these days don’t even want to enter the library anymore! They’re glued to their phones and think that all their questions can be easily answered by simply Googling.
If you’re guessing that they must be ending up on some official site (such as the online version of Merck Manuals) or even a medical website, guess again! Nope, they’re just Googling to see what comes up. The same way we look for help with how long pasta sauce lasts in the fridge or how to fix a toilet that keeps running.
Shockingly, only seven percent of the students surveyed said they would check out a textbook first.
As one student noted, it’s now a “high-speed world” where you can get what you need online in the same time it takes to walk into a library. Funny, but generations of good doctors practically lived in the library during their student days.
But that’s not the worst of it when it comes to getting your facts online. At least these students have professors who might (hopefully!) set them straight if they veer too far off the beaten path.
No, the craziest of all would have to be doctors — practicing docs — who are learning how to do surgical procedures from YouTube.
And the biggest bunch of on-the-go online practitioners would have to be plastic surgeons. A recent survey of several hundred of them revealed that 64 percent had learned how to do things like nose jobs and Botox injections via helpful videos!
But getting medical instruction online can go way beyond that.
A licensed doctor on duty in the ER of a South Carolina hospital who needed to perform an emergency incision in a man’s throat so he could breathe actually turned to a YouTube video for instructions. Sadly, his patient died.
Obviously we’ve entered a new realm in the way things are being done. It’s may be great to have a car that parks itself, or an Amazon Alexa device that you can talk to, but when it comes to doctors, I have to say I like the old-fashioned way they learned things a lot better!
So, if you have a choice — and certainly if you’re having any kind of elective surgery done — I’d say go with a doctor who’s been practicing the longest and has the most experience. And who probably learned how to do his job long before Dr. Google ever graduated.
“Like patients, medical students turn to Google, not textbooks, for information” Joanne Finnegan, April 12, 2017, FierceHealthcare, fiercehealthcare.com
