A few years ago, a very small number of patients visiting their physicians had questions of their own after a consult, when they asked doctors about diseases they read about online. Now, such behavior is not at all uncommon, with many people searching for diagnostics and other answers online themselves. A new research has found that about 31 percent of doctors believe their authority is undermined by the Internet, and say that their relations with their patients are becoming increasingly complicated.

Spanish experts from the Miguel Hernandez University (MHU), led by researcher Jose Joaquin Mira, say that the abundance of health information on the Internet has a double effect on the patients and doctors alike. On the one hand, it gives people the means to check if their doctor really knows his or her job, but, on the other hand, it also feeds people lies, on numerous websites created by so-called pharmaceutical companies selling fake elixirs. The full results of the investigation are published in the June issue of the journal Atencion Primaria (Primary Health Care). Joaquin Mira has been the main author.

In their experiments, conducted on 660 Spanish National Health System doctors, the investigators determined that 96 percent of the study participants had been questioned by their patients about conditions they'd read about on the Internet. Almost 30 percent of the doctors also revealed that they recommended various websites to their patients, which they thought to be more reliable than others. The healthcare experts worked in the provinces of Alicante, Madrid, Zaragoza and Huesca.

“More than 40% of the Spanish population is estimated to browse the Internet in search of information about health. [But the Internet] also poses new unanswered questions and very few studies have been carried out to date,” Mira says. “All the specialists agree that they do not believe the Internet favors patient independence.” This is one of the main reasons why doctors do not normally recommend websites to their patients, as varied information could undermine their credibility.