Over at the e-patients.net blog, I wanted to make you aware of three recent entries worth your time:

Cyberchondria: Old Wine in New Bottles

Just before Thanksgiving, Microsoft released a study entitled, “Cyberchondria: Studies of the Escalation of Medical Concerns in Web Search.” Ryen White and Eric Horvitz took advantage of a data set that few people have access to (log files from Microsoft’s Live Search engine and MSN Health and Fitness) as well as a survey of 515 Microsoft employees. They also did a great service to those of us who have a problem with the term “cyberchondriac” since they define cyberchondria as “the unfounded escalation of concerns about common symptomatology, based on the review of search results and literature on the Web.” That does not describe most internet users and therefore, people might think about retiring the term from general usage.

A Fatally Flawed Medical Educational Model

This week, many news outlets reported on how residents should be given 5 hours of sleep after working 16 hours straight.

Think about that for a moment.

In what other job — any job in the world — would it be acceptable to even use the term “after working 16 hours.” The 16 hour workday went out with the Industrial era here in the U.S. (Residents can actually be required to be on-call for up to 30 hours at a time on a single shift, which is even more absurd.)

How We Die

This is what I know about death.

My ninety-eight-year-old grandmother, admitted to a nursing home with a broken hip/dehydration, awoke from a deep slumber, laughing and clapping her hands when my five-year-old daughter played the violin.

A week later she had a stroke and couldn’t swallow.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

Like this author?
Catch up on other posts by John M. Grohol, PsyD (or subscribe to their feed).

Comments

This post currently has 2 comments. You can read the comments or leave your own thoughts on our new comments page.

Trackbacks

Cyberchondria, Medical Education and a Story of Dying - World of … | crmcourses.com (12/5/2008)

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 4 Dec 2008
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.