Patient Guide to WWW - Coursework Example

1. Content update Researchers regularly share their knowledge derived from clinical trials with the community of medical experts. Hence, patient or caretaker should consider only those websites where content and information is reviewed and updated on a regular basis. (Fogg, 2004). 2. Examine the source The website’s content shouldn’t contain anecdotes and testimonials of the patients as primary health information (Szwarc, 2008) Caretaker or the patient must understand the significance of last three letters “URL” in the website.

For example, websites ending with .edu or .gov are ‘educational’ and ‘government’ sites respectively with more reliable health information as compared to the one with .com (commercial) that may sometimes try to advertise and sell products assuring miraculous cure of which doctors are also unaware. 3. Verify the information Usually if some data is true and accurate, it will be published in more than one website. The internet user must check to see whether the facts provided by one source are published by any other website for the same diseases.

The content of the website must also contain author’s basic contact information such as the name. Credible website. For example the site www.hhs.gov is a government site containing matter from US Department of Health and Services. The hypertension related information such as causes, nutrition etc. conveyed by this site are accurate and trustworthy in following aspects. 3.       The  amount of salt intake has direct effect on patient’s blood pressure (Gardener, 2011). The website mentioned instructs patient not to  have  more than 5-6 grams of salt per day.

Same fact is also provided by the website www.ext.colostate.edu, which is an education site (Anderson, Young, Long and Prior, 2011) . Suspect website.  The website www.curezone.com  or the link http://kiueyxyeor.collecyrie.com may be