If been in a clinic where after describing my symptoms the doctor opened the computer and typed them into a search engine. I asked her if she was googling it and she said "sort of". She started telling me about a search tool doctor's use which is much more professionally focused than Google (who diagnoses everyone with cancer) and I was very impressed both with her honesty and that this existed.

It's been a few years since so I don't remember if it was a windows app or a website but it did have a very 90s looking interface.

I had exactly this happen once in a regular MD’s office, but he was reading to me from literally the Wikipedia article on carpal tunnel, on a Chromebook. Actually Wikipedia.

I've had similar experiences like that; the doctor pulling up articles from common websites. But it wasn't the doctor pulling up the article because they didn't know what was in the article, it was them showing me so I can look it up later and read more if I wanted.

Wikipedia seems like a poor choice, though. Maybe carpel tunnel is basic enough for Wikipedia to be fine. I've been shown stuff like Mayo Clinic articles.

My primary did this. There's a site called UpToDate which Epic apparently has a one click integration with.

It's basically medical Google.

I caught a gastrointestinal parasite in one journey to Brazil (I should have avoided the street food!) and I am 90% sure that my Spanish doctor just googled what the hell I had when she got the results of the analysis, right there in front of me. I am not 100% sure because I could not see her screen, but the (in)frequency of mouse clicks was consistent with someone going over google and reading a bunch of pages. And then suddenly she started typing a lot and didn't use the mouse at all - switched to her daily medical app, I presumed.

The antibiotics she gave me did the trick. She was young, though.

I can’t agree with this enough.

I deal with daily chronic pain which has rendered me essentially unable to work. My full-time job has been “patient” for almost three years.

What I’ve learned is that you have to do their work for them if you want to make progress.

Sometimes that means showing up with highlighted printouts of studies that they would never get around to reading if you didn’t deliver them — and follow up on them — personally.

Other times that means that means playing dumb and “presenting” (not faking, just highlighting) the right preliminary symptoms to get a key test ordered.

I’m lucky in that I have education. I can read a study. I understand probability and statistics. I can learn terminology and use it (somewhat) correctly in a sentence. I often wonder how people without a STEM background get any care at all. Perhaps they don’t?

It’s a horrible, broken system that amounts to little more than insurance-mandated gatekeeping.

My wife is a nurse who pivoted into pharma, and when our daughter was diagnosed with a heart tumor, the only thing that ultimately resulted in us finding the right case was my wife's experience and ability to 1) ask the right questions, and 2) conduct her own scientific literature search & meta analyses. I kept thinking throughout that, if we weren't able to do this, our daughter would probably die ... and how many millions of patients receive subpar care because they don't have the skills or knowledge to keep care providers (and insurers) honest.

There's a lot of medical misinformation online, too.

I mean, it's not like they are going to ask wikihow.

Updated versions of their books and medical journals, or even a stackoverflow-like platform where they could discuss and read answers would be magnitudes better.

Maybe humans memorizing tons of information was the best approach for medicine a century ago, but it's not the case anymore

An educated man is not a person filled with facts, but a person who knows where to get particular information he needs.

Someone with an extensive education should be able to decide which information can be considered good. If not, then maybe we should stop testing memorization and focus on ability to solve problems using ALL tools available.

> "Someone with an extensive education should be able to decide which information can be considered good."

Uh, what is an education other than absorption and integration of information? If they haven't learned (i.e. memorized) a large quantity of information as part of their extensive education to guide them, they have zero chance of "being able to decide which information can be considered good" by definition.

There are medical databases specifically for things like this (not available to the general public), but doctors often don’t reference them because of false confidence or time pressure.

Presumably, doctors would have access to better information than the layperson, and know how to sift through it. I know the person you replied to said "Google", but that's been a fairly overloaded term for decades now.

Personally, I would like to see a doctor searching a site made for doctors. Seeing one just do an actual generic online search would not give me much confidence.

One eye opening fact I learned when my family was dealing with a complex medical diagnosis was how specialists have seemingly the entire population of peers on speed dial. If you can help them connect dots to other specialists, they likely have the ability to get in touch with them in near real time. I mean, it may not be 100% reliable, but my new MO is to assume all physicians have a batphone, and to ask them to use it if they need additional opinions & insights.

Which is why having an expert sift through it is helpful - he can immediately rule out garbage from stuff that at least looks sane and might warrant further consideration.

As engineers we do it all the time (sometimes subconsciously) when searching for technical documentation. Having that skill in other fields would be a godsend, but the next best thing would be to have someone else do it on our behalf.