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Im alyssa fanta. Here in the johns hopkins. Breast.
Cancer. Survivorship program. Today.
We were. Joined by dr. Bob miller.
Hes a medical oncologist. The breast cancer. Dr.
Miller. Thank you so much for joining us today. Very happy to be here thanks can you tell me do a lot of your patients use the internet to find health information.
I think thats absolutely true these days. I think statistics have shown that probably 60 of all adults in the us are online and looking up health information online. Is probably the third.
Most common reason people go online after reading email and doing google searches. So i think since the mid 1990s. Its pretty much expected that patients are likely to be online.
Whether they really tell you about that or not an exam room and do you find that this has changed how you practice medicine. I think it probably did initially but as i said its been going on for so many years now.
I think weve weve just kind of adapted to it i think. Its made it easier in some ways for me to take care of patients because many of them come armed to visits with a lot of good information about what im likely to be talking to them about theyve theyve done. Some research online.
And i i think that it makes my job almost easier to know that they have done some of the background work that they used to have to rely on the physician or the healthcare team to do i think sometimes it can be a challenge it introduces certain challenges. Its easy to find misinformation online. It can be hard even for someone whos pretty sophisticated at searching to try to understand whether a particular piece of information is relevant to their health condition.
Whether its taken out of context or not so i think the the positives outweigh the negatives. Though im really happy that patients are doing in thats good to hear are there are websites replaces. It you would recommend for patients to get started to find reliable health information.
I think theres theres really quite a few i think i think it helps to know what to look for first. I think you have to first look at the type of website. I tell patients that probably the most reliable websites are those that are sponsored by governmental organizations or our medical centers or large medical institutions or professional societies and i usually try to steer my patients to those type of websites first rather than telling them to try to search something on google.
Because its a lot harder to be able to filter. What you get through a search. I think specific websites that i think are particularly helpful for cancer patients would be one would be cancer.
Gov which is the national cancer. Institute another is called cancernet. Which is from the american society of clinical oncology.
Which is a very good source of information. Livestrong org is another great site particularly for survivorship care. And just to put in a plug for the hopkins kimmel.
Cancer center website. I think we have some really good information for our patients.
There switching gears a little bit sometimes we hear from patients that they find it therapeutic or helpful to do blogging do you recommend that patients do this or have you found this to be helpful thats a very good question. I i think im starting to see that um. I think that probably more and more of our patients are starting to explore that i have not observed very many of my patients volunteering to me that theyre doing blogging.
I think perhaps if they are they may have some apprehensions about sharing this information with me. But i i know there have been some research studies that have looked at this and it has clearly been shown that this is a great source of comfort for patients. And it really has therapeutic benefit as part of their the whole care delivery process.
So i really encourage patients were interested in this way to do this it just hasnt come up yet in my session. Often what about other social media sites things like facebook and twitter has it changed how patients look at health information and our caregivers get information. Oh absolutely and i think its really fascinating what a what a worldwide cultural phenomenon and social media has become in the last four or five years.
It really has touched pretty much all of our lives. I find that many patients find a great deal of comfort in interacting with other patients who have the same condition on why its so easy these days for example everything is pretty much free you just need internet access then you can join twitter and facebook and blog pretty much without cost and its very easy to find other patients like yourself who have the exact same diagnosis and you can really share with them. And you can learn from them.
And some people have called this peer to peer healthcare. Which is i think a helpful term. Now.
Its not without its its risks. Its not without its cost. And i i think you have to be aware that not all the information that you get in this and these sort of social media is going to be valid and its going to be relevant to you.
But i but i think clearly there is a great untapped potential that our patients certainly more so than health care providers have figured out a long time ago great well dr. Barr. This was so helpful thank you very much for all that great information.
Youre welcome glad to be here. Thank you so much for joining us today. .
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