Visits to Doctors Who Are Not in, Ever

This story breaks down the generations in the search for information, "Dr. Google" in particular here provides the basic information and the article continues on to talk about how different generations locate and find information today with technology.  BD

“I’m contagious,” my 9-year-old said, looking up from the laptop on which she had just typed her symptoms one morning last week. “I shouldn’t go to school with strip throat.”

“It’s strep throat,” I said, not looking up from my breakfast. “And you don’t have it. So go get dressed.

Patients should not skip going to the doctor in favor of sleuthing online, though. “I encourage my patients to get more medical information to be a better patient,” Dr. Rohack said. “But I also think you need help wading through all that information, and that continues to be the higher role of doctors.”

As today’s children age, they will increasingly rely on collaborating online with peers as a tool to weed out erroneous information, Mr. Prensky predicted.

“Our generation holds information that might be useful one day close to the chest, but kids share it like crazy,” he said, adding that in the future, “Kids will look at a situation and say, ‘This is a problem for 20 people to figure out,’ or ‘This is a problem that will take 10 people,’ and they’ll break it down and share it.”

Until then? The next time my daughter comes down with a case of strip throat, I may suggest to her that Dr. Google’s treatment of choice is a shot.

Source: Visits to Doctors Who Are Not in, Ever - New York Times