Determining a good website for use is very difficult. Patients often go through a very hard process in determining the right website that they can use to find the right medication and advice about the disease or condition they are suffering from. There is no known guideline to the right method of choosing a website but the entire process depends on the skills that an individual has about the internet and computer applications in general. The following is the basic guideline that a patient needs to follow so as to get the right website: • Look for a website that is credible.
A credible website is not full of suspected elements like most reviews praising a particular doctor. Some suspect websites will tend to have reviews which are vague so as to win the patient. Such reviews could be involving some doctors or some hospitals. • If the website gives a choice for entering the data of the patient, it’s important that the information should be little and takes less than a minute to complete. Information that is targeted should not also be sensitive but should include basic elements like age, condition, location and sex.
• Look for a website that offers a lot of information so as to get a wider range of services about community and primary health care services. This includes obtaining the varied information by looking at the views from people and by actually getting the points well explained and shown in the website. • A good website should provide a free text box that enables the patients to enter comments in. these text boxes should however have filters so as to avoid profanities.
This type of website has moderators who are responsible for checking posts that may be harmful to the healthcare provider reputation. • Choose a website that gives the performance list of doctors and not the organizations. Note the ranking of the doctors from this website and that will give a choice as to the best website and consequently the best health care center to attend to. Mr. Path is a patient suffering from Diabetes Mellitus. He has approached me to decide for him the best method of acquiring information about his state from a website.
He has been having this disease for quite sometime now and he says that he wants to know the origin, medication of the disease, the effects and how to get a proper physician to cure him. He has been using some herbal drugs to treat this condition but for him that is not enough but he wants the exact information of the disease. I conduct some research and I find out the following sites with some contrasts. Recommended site: I took Mr. Path through a site that I recommended called the www. merck. com, a site that is owned and managed by experts in the medical field.
This website gives detailed, easy to understand and elaborate information for all type of patients, information that has been researched and put together by the medical experts. Their mission is to ‘Committed to making a difference’ and their vision is to provide reliable information and suggested treatments for diabetic patients (The Merck manuals online medical library: Home edition, 2009). The site is the owned by Merck medical association and they have provided their information so that every patient can be able to access to it at any given time.
The information includes their email, their address and phone number. The site also contains some few questions that the patient will be expected to answer in a short span of time (The Merck manuals online medical library: Home edition, 2009). Suspect website: I also took Mr. Path through a suspect website called the “medlineplus. gov. ” I highly suspected as not a good site for him and any other patient (Lindberg, 2009). Although the site appeared to be genuine from the name, it tends to hoodwink the patient since it provides a lot of reviews that are not credible and it leaves one with so many questions unanswered.
The owner of the website is called Donald A. B. Lindberg and any other information about their contacts and location has been given scantly that it gives patient a mood of suspense. One of the features contained in the website is a form that the client needs to fill but information required is very long and highly sensitive. There is also a list of organizations in the website that are listed as the leading in the production of health care services, making the patient to change his mind to focusing on the organizations rather than concentrating on the best doctors.
References: Buckley, P, Kennedy, A. and Clark, D. (2003). The rough guide to the Internet, Rough Guides Plc Brazin, L. (2006). Internet guide to medical diets and nutrition, Routledge Plc Dept. of Education (2000). Parents patient’s guide to the Internet, United States: U. S. Dept. of Education Chellen, S (2003). The essential guide to the Internet for health professionals, Routledge Plc Dickel, M. and Roehm, E. (2007). Systematic Guide to Internet Searching, McGraw-Hill Professional Hock, R. (2007). The extreme searcher’s Internet handbook: a guide for the serious searcher
Randolph: Information Today, Inc Krol, J. (1992). The whole Internet: user’s guide & catalog, O’Reilly & Associates Lindberg, D. ‘Diabetes’ retrieved on 24th July, 2009 from <http://www. nlm. nih. gov/medlineplus/diabetes. html> ‘The Merck manuals online medical library: Home edition’, Diabetes Mellitus retrieved on 24th July, 2009 from <http://www. merck. com/mmhe/sec13/ch165/ch165a. htm> ‘The Intelligent Patient’s Guide to the Internet’ retrieved on 5th August 2009 from <http://www. thebestmedicalcare. com/patients/patientguide. htm>