Do Patients Access Appropriate Information Online?

Abstract

Health care providers should be aware of information available on the Internet to ensure proper patient care. The current analysis assesses the reliability, quality, and readability of internet information describing rhytidectomy. Previously validated survey instruments to assess the reliability, quality, and readability of online websites describing rhytidectomy were used. An internet search using Google with the search term “facelift” was conducted. The first 50 search results were reviewed, and 36 were deemed appropriate to be included in this analysis. Websites were divided based on type of authorship into professional organization, academic, physician based, and unidentified. The validated DISCERN instrument was used to determine reliability, quality, and overall rating of each site. The Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES) and Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL) were used to measure readability. A 1 to 3 point scale was used to rate websites, with a higher number indicating a website that possessed either greater reliability or greater quality. Mean scores for reliability ranged from 1.7 (±0.99) in the academic group to 2.0 (±0.12) in the unidentified group. Mean scores for quality ranged from 1.5 (±0.13) in the unidentified group to 1.7 (±0.38) in the physician-based group. The highest overall rating was 1.4 (±0.22 and ± 0.31, respectively) in the unidentified and physician-based groups. The lowest overall rating was 1 (±0.58) in the academic group. FRESs ranged from 21.6 to 74.6. FKGLs ranged from 6.9 to 13.9. Information available online regarding rhytidectomy may be significantly deficient in reliability, quality, and readability. These deficiencies are present in articles with all types of author affiliations. This underscores the clinicians' duty to provide patients with high-quality information at an adequate level of comprehension.

Analgesic drugs: What quality of information is present on the Internet?

“…The classification of results in search engine searches is based on complex algorithms whose adopted mechanism is not well-publicized. It is believed that the position of electronic websites in the ranking is mainly associated with user traffic, involving the number of visitors and page popularity, and not with their information quality (Arif & Ghezzi, 2018;Gupta et al, 2017;Yeung & D'Souza, 2013). This tends to influence lay users always to access the first pages, considering popularity over quality.…”

“…The scoring reference established by Charnock et al (1999) in the DISCERN questionnaire was used to website's level quality. It is considered a three-point descriptive scale, similar to that carried out in other studies (Gupta et al, 2017;Yeung & D'Souza, 2013). For each sentence, the presence or absence of the evaluated criterion on the websites selected was verified, with up to three possibilities of answers linked to a given score: absence -one (1); partial presence -two…”

Online information on Crohn's disease in Chinese: an evaluation of its quality and readability

“…It was designed to assess the reliability of medical information and to evaluate the quality of medical treatment information. In recent years the system has been used by different sub‐disciplinary medical teams to evaluate the quality of English patient‐education information for several chronic diseases, showing a good applicable value, and has gradually been promoted by the academic community as one of the core evaluation systems . However, its feasibility in Chinese patient‐education information has not been determined so far.…”

“…In recent years the system has been used by different sub-disciplinary medical teams to evaluate the quality of English patient-education information for several chronic diseases, showing a good applicable value, and has gradually been promoted by the academic community as one of the core evaluation systems. 9,10,14 However, its feasibility in Chinese patienteducation information has not been determined so far. Our study showed a good consistency of each evaluation part with all Spearman coefficients above 0.55, suggesting that it could be used as one Chinese patient-education information evaluation system among others.…”

“…Two CD specialists participated and independently completed the assessment (Y. Li and J. Li). The internet patient‐education information included was scored using the DISCERN marking system proposed by the University of Oxford Institute of Health Sciences in 1999 and simplified by subsequent investigators (Table ). The simplified DISCERN marking system consists of two parts; it assesses the reliability and the quality of the information related to the treatment selection.…”