I am guilty of this one.

DOCTORS have warned they are seeing too many "cyberchondriacs", those patients who misdiagnose their illnesses after Googling their symptoms.

The Australian Medical Association is concerned the plethora of online medical information is doing more harm than good, with patients increasingly referring to the internet for advice before consulting a trained GP.

"You can't make a diagnosis using the internet," AMA vice-president Steve Hambleton said.

"Patients turn up with sheets of paper convinced they have a particular problem.

"Doctors have to explain why patients haven't got something — before explaining what they have got. It certainly increases stress for the patient.

"Medical practitioners go through a minimum of 10 years of training before they can practise independently. You can't match that with an internet search engine."


Over the past 12 months most health-related Google searches in Australia were for information related to "symptoms", "blood" and "cancer".

Additionally, online queries about "hemorrhoids" and "thyroid symptoms" have doubled since 2009.

Google's user experience researcher, Dan Russell, said the onus to assess the accuracy and credibility of online information was on the individual.

"We now as individuals have access to huge amounts of information and you can pull up thousands and thousands of pages about Alzheimer's or irritable bowel syndrome," Mr Russell said.

"The irony is that people once learned how to look at the page of a book, document or journal and understand roughly how believable it was... but now for basically no money any wacko can write anything and put it on the web.

"As an individual at home looking at all this stuff, you have to constantly ask, 'Can I believe this?'"

Mosman GP Penny Shaw said simple symptoms were often misconstrued by patients using the internet, resulting in severe anxiety.

"I've had patients who have come in with a headache thinking they have a brain tumour and many who've had tingling in their fingers and thought they had multiple sclerosis," Dr Shaw said.

http://mobile.news.com.au/technology/stop-googling-your-symptoms-doctors-are-sick-of-it/story-e6frfro0-1225997300708

I live my life on google.

Google can bring you back 100000 answers , a physician can bring you back the right one

Google has done more harm dan good in medical practice.....smh

And what's wrong with googling up my symptoms?

Btw, don't docs consult their own books and health encyclopedia? :-)
Some docs even consult dis same google.
Their diagnosis may even be wrong atimes - they ain't God.

Make ona just confess sey google don snatch ona patients.

Lool! This is soo true in my case. I dont do it anymore after i mis diagnosed and scared myself half to death only to find out it was nothing...

It is not the same internet the acusser is using to accuse the acussed? Will i have read this if not published online? Abeg, every good thing have iota of bad in it. But when patients in developing and under-develop countries goggle your hospitals to perform kidney transplate, heart, liver cancer surgery with hundreds of thousand of dollars etc una no see side effect of that with goggle? Just like having information on my car problem before visting a mechanics make i no fall mugu, i must do same to my health before you call yam, potato for me afterall na my body.