Forgot your password?
Wikis in the patient-practitioner conversation?
Reflections on a recent article about the place of wikis in the dialogue and interaction between patients, practitioners and carers.
I came across a recent article courtesy of E-Health Insider which mentioned a paper from Demos that considered the place of wikis in the interaction mix between patients and their practitioners, which I thought merited a closer look. A thought provoking article that had me trawling back in my mind over sociological and transactional analysis frameworks for looking at what takes place when we visit our GPs, the authors have done an excellent job of providing a snapshot of a useful point in evolution of health practice. Drawing on interview samples with patients, GPs, part of their analysis considered the impact of the internet-informed consumer in patient-GP encounters. The following quote from page 9 of Demos paper was just gold:
As part of our research, we asked a group of young GPs what they thought of the internet:
A1: For doctors?
A2: Fantastic. I’m on Google all day. Any medical questions I have, just type them in it and up it comes, before you see a patient…
Q: And what about for patients?
A1: We’d rather the internet didn’t exist. They look up some really scary stuff.
Their consideration of the place of various technologies, most notably wikis, as support tools for a longer term dialogue beyond the GP rooms fitted nicely with some of the wider trends evident in GP practice emerging amongst younger GPs, with trust and the care/maintenance of trust within clinical encounters as a central theme. Take this interview comment for instance on page 49.
Q: What do you have to do now to earn trust?
A1: I think admitting, definitely, being fallible.
A2: They’re often surprised if I don’t have an answer. I say, ‘I don’t know, I’ll
call you later.’ Then I’ll call people at home and they’ll say, thank you so much.
It’s almost like they’re more impressed by you saying you don’t know but you’ve
gone and looked it up for them.
Providing support tools for people to continue a conversation about their care or health profile and their role in self-care can only be a good thing as we move progressively away from a paternalistic encounter model to more equitable partnerships. Now that I've tuned in to channel Demos, I'll be interested to see what else they come up with in mapping out the landscape of shifting paradigms in Health.
Webblast Canberra 2008
