The group that Cathy belongs to is Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com): Stroke Survivors International. Family members or care partners may want to consider strokecaregiverssupport also at Yahoo Groups.
Is Online Support and Information You Receive Online Credible?
On one hand, health professionals and stroke survivors and their families worry about the value of “lay information” and whether lay peers will provide correct information.
The main concern health professionals’ voice about the Internet is whether the information is correct and how people without medical training or “lay” people can decide if the information is credible or if it is wrong. Some doctors complain that patients bring in information off the Internet and make sense of it for them. Other doctors give patients websites to check for medical information.
Dr. Gunter Eysenbach of the University of Toronto, Department of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation points out that in medicine -- the core dimensions of medical message credibility as traditionally conceived, such as message “accuracy” or “completeness,” are difficult to measure objectively. He suggests that evaluations of accuracy need to be from the point of view of the user.
If you are not sure how to decide if the information you are reading online is correct there a websites with guides to help you decide if the information is right for you.
Here are a couple:
- Integrative Oncology
- Robert Harris: Virtual Salt
- Eysenbach, Gunther. “Credibility of Health Information and Digital Media: New Perspectives and Implications for Youth." Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility. Edited by Miriam J. Metzger and Andrew J. Flanagin. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 123–154. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262562324.123
No comments:
Post a Comment