- Patient’s internet use and its effects on the healthcare professional-patient relationship - Online healthcare information: A matter of balancing

In the era of information and technology, Internet use is widespread. Due to the unprecedented convenience it brings, Internet has been considered as a large health communication system in recent years. Online health information has been searched by more than 50,000,000 people (Cline & Haynes, 2001). However, the impact of Internet use on health care has been widely debated during the past few years. This essay would consider the benefits and drawbacks of internet use by patients within the healthcare professional-patient relationship and predict the effects of this trend on the future role of healthcare professional.

First and foremost, sharing of responsibility for knowledge helps develop the relationships between the physicians and patients. It is known that there are more than 70,000 health related websites, including the British medical Journal, Medline and Healthfinder (Cline & Haynes, 2001). Patients can gain access to online healthcare information with ease. Internet access not only equips patients with suitable and adequate healthcare knowledge about physical illnesses, but also enables them to suggest various approaches to their physicians. Since the Internet encourages exchanges of information both locally and internationally, patients can share the knowledge learnt with the...

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