Web Searching for Information About Physicians
- Tristan Gorrindo, MD;
- James E. Groves, MD
- Author Affiliations: Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
The Internet will increasingly change patients' expectations of clinicians, so that physicians will routinely need to offer services like e-messaging, instant messaging, video conferencing and other online services.—Pew Internet & American Life Project1
Physicians have become accustomed to the curiosity and dependency of patients in the practice of medicine. Yet they need autonomy and privacy to move freely in their personal lives. They wince under the glare of publicity and often feel grateful to medical dramas on television and in film for helping to slake that curiosity.
But some patients want more. Physicians intuit that those pressing for nonmedical relationships with their caregivers and those seeking information about them are potentially clinging, possibly personality disordered, or perhaps even threatening.2 Not uncommonly, casual conversations in physicians' dining rooms turn to one or another colleague who is being stalked by a patient and must take the necessary steps to …
