We are often asked for help with finding authoritative information for patients on a variety of health issues. I thought I’d share just a few of our favourite consumer health sites that you can reliably recommend to your clients. These ones are general in coverage.
HealthInsite is an Australian Government initiative, aimed at providing "up-to-date and quality assessed information on important health topics." It has a good A-Z listing of health topics with some information developed in-house as well as linking to other agencies.
MedlinePlus is provided by the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes for Health. There are searchable health topics in 40 languages, plus an online health encyclopaedia and dictionary. A bit US-centric, but very comprehensive.
Patient UK is a British consumer health site, set up and authored by doctors. "The authors write evidence based information leaflets on a wide range of medical and health topics. They also review health and illness related websites and link to many of these."
UpToDate for Patients has evidence-based literature on a wide range of health issues. Either search by keyword or narrow down through browsing. Well-referenced and free for everyone.
FamilyDoctor is from the American Academy of Family Physicians. Also worth a look.
Of course, there are many more reliable sites - I could go on for pages. Tell your clients they should look for government agencies, non-profit organisations and clinician-based sites, as a general rule of thumb.
Finally, if you're looking to print off a handout for a patient, you can find quite good ones (although US-based) on the clinical UpToDate site (which you have access to through the link on your desktop within NCAHS), or on MDConsult or Nursing Consult - both accessible through CIAP.
No comments:
Post a Comment