The Other Exam Room: When Doctors 'Google' Their Patients 231
theodp writes "Writing in the NY Times, Dr. Haider Javed Warraich shares a dirty little medical secret: doctors do 'Google' their patients, and the practice is likely to only become more common. And while he personally feels the practice should be restricted to situations where there's a genuine safety issue, an anecdote Warraich shares illustrates how patient search could provide insight into what otherwise might be unsolved mysteries — or lead to a snap misdiagnosis: 'I was once taking care of a frail, older patient who came to the hospital feeling very short of breath. It wasn't immediately clear why, but her breathing was getting worse. To look for accidental ingestions, I sent for a drug screen and, to my great surprise, it came back positive for cocaine. It didn't make sense to me, given her age and the person lying before me, and I was concerned she had been the victim of some sort of abuse. She told me she had no idea why there was cocaine in her system. When I walked out of the room, a nurse called me over to her computer. There, on MugShots.com, was a younger version of my patient's face, with details about how she had been detained for cocaine possession more than three decades earlier. I looked away from the screen, feeling like I had violated my patient's privacy. I resumed our medical exam, without bringing up the finding on the Internet, and her subsequent hospital course was uneventful.'"
Go Ahead, Google Me (Score:5, Funny)
I don't care if my doctor Google's me. They'll have to weed through millions of results for Anonymous Coward.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's the sign of our times (Score:5, Funny)
You know what a good thing is? Paragraphs, dude. Paragraphs.
I was momentarily autistic when I wrote that, you insensitive clod!
Re:Go Ahead, Google Me (Score:5, Funny)
I don't care if my doctor Google's me. They'll have to weed through millions of results for Anonymous Coward.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder [wikipedia.org]
Re:As House Says (Score:5, Funny)
That explains why he failed to diagnose that guy with chronic truth-telling syndrome.
Re:As House Says (Score:5, Funny)