dr google Failures or How dr google is bad for You ?

Dr. Google Will See You Now

dr google, Have you ever caught yourself symptom-searching, on dr google only to find you might be coming down with something more serious than you’d ever imagined?

dr google, Doctors are reporting huge rises in the “worried well” – healthy patients who, fuelled by Google and Wikipedia searches, are diagnosing themselves with everything from food allergies to brain tumors.

Dr-Google

What is Dr. Google? 

Dr. Google is a term or name given by the doctor or health field related people to google.

Why Peoples Give term Dr. Google to Google?

Because of these times a lot of people curing their diseases by searching on google rather than going to the clinic or hospital they prefer Dr. Google on Original doctors.

Some best Featured stories of DR. Google's Profit or loss

Dr. GoogleWomen experiencing signs of breast cancer vary in how they value, use, and trust 'Dr. Google' when making sense of their symptoms, a new study in the journal Health, Risk & Society reports.

Researchers from the University of Surrey, led by Dr. Afrodita Marcu, investigated whether women sought health information online when experiencing potential breast cancer symptoms and, if so, whether they found it useful. Interviewing 27 women, aged between 47 and 67 years old, researchers found different levels of engagement with the internet for health information that was driven by a range of attitudes and levels of trust.

Some women, particularly those with no formal educational qualifications or with fewer than two O levels, were found to be less positive about the usefulness of 'Dr. Google' and were largely against using the internet for health information, claiming that this could lead to misdiagnosis or to unnecessary worry about what their symptoms might mean.

Researchers also found that women, although open to using the internet for health information, reported feeling overwhelmed by what they found and became reluctant to conduct further searches. The majority of women who experienced such feelings went to see their GP, mostly because they felt that only health care professionals could resolve concerns about their symptoms and provide appropriate answers.

Other women in the study were however confident in looking up information online about their breast changes and used it to interpret and act upon their symptoms. These women did not view online health information as problematic nor did they express mistrust in 'Dr. Google.' Some even supplemented the information received from the GP by further investigations on the internet.

Dr. Afrodita Marcu, Research Fellow at the University of Surrey, said: "The internet is a valuable source of medical information. However, it also contains a lot of poor quality information, or information which cannot be easily interpreted by laypeople or applied to an individual situation, so it is not surprising that some people feel they cannot trust it.

"The way that a person will capitalize on the internet for health purposes depends on many factors, like the nature of their symptoms or their fear about coming across misleading information, so we should not assume that 'Dr. Google is valuable and credible to all."

This study received funding from Cancer Research UK.

One of the best examples of failure-DR. Google Failure

Neha recently had a patient who came in convinced she had a brain tumor. As she told it, it started with fatigue.

She first assumed it was because she had two young children and a full-time job and never got enough sleep. Or maybe it was because she was just staying up late at night to scan through social media.

One night, feeling particularly drained as she sat slumped on the couch, she decided to Dr. Google her symptom see if she could find an at-home remedy. One website led to another, and before she knew it, she was on a website dedicated to brain tumors, convinced that her fatigue was due to a silent mass. She was suddenly very alert.

And very anxious.

“I didn’t sleep at all that night,” she explained.

She called our office the next morning and scheduled a visit but wasn’t able to get in for another week. During this time, I’d later learn, she didn’t eat or sleep well all week and felt anxious and distracted. She also continued to scan Dr. Google search results for brain tumors and even became concerned that she was showing other symptoms, too.

At her appointment, she told us of all the symptoms she thought she might have. She provided a list of all the scans and blood tests she wanted. Though her doctor had reservations over this, the tests the patient wanted were eventually ordered.

Needless to say, many expensive scans later, her results showed that she didn’t have a brain tumor. Instead, the patient’s blood work, which most likely would’ve been ordered anyway given her complaint of chronic fatigue, showed that she was slightly anemic.

We told her to increase her iron intake, which she did. She began feeling less tired soon after.

Dr. Google contains a vast quantity of information but lacks discernment

This isn’t an uncommon scenario: We feel our various aches and pains and turn to Google — or “Dr. Google” as some of us in the medical community refer to it — to see what’s wrong with us.

Even as a registered nurse who’s studying to be a nurse practitioner, I’ve turned to Dr. Google with the same disjointed questions about random symptoms, like “pain stomach dying?”


The problem is, while Google certainly has a vast quantity of information, it lacks discernment. By this I mean, while it’s pretty easy to find lists that sound like our symptoms, we don’t have the medical training to understand the other factors that go into making a medical diagnosis, like personal and family history. And neither does Dr. Google.






This is such a common issue that there’s a running joke between healthcare professionals that if you Google a symptom (any symptom), you’ll inevitably be told you have cancer.


And this rabbit hole into fast, frequent, and (usually) false diagnoses can lead to more Googling. And a lot of anxiety. In fact, this has become such a common occurrence that psychologists have coined a term for it: cyberchondria, or when your anxiety increases due to health-related searches.


So, while the possibility of experiencing this increased anxiety related to internet searches for medical diagnoses and information may not be necessary, it sure is common.


There’s also the issue around the reliability of sites that promise an easy — and free — diagnosis from the comfort of your own couch. And while some websites are correct more than 50 percent of the time, others are greatly lacking.


Yet despite the chances of unnecessary stress and finding incorrect, or even potentially harmful, information, Americans frequently use the internet to find medical diagnoses. According to a 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, 72 percent of American adult internet users said they looked online for health information in the previous year. Meanwhile, 35 percent of American adults admit to going online for the sole purpose of finding a medical diagnosis for themselves or a loved one.


Using Dr. Google to search out health topics isn’t always a bad thing

This, however, isn’t to say all Googling is bad. The same Pew survey also found that people who educated themselves on health topics using the internet were more likely to get better treatment.


There are also times when using Google as a starting point can help get you to the hospital when you need it most, as another one of my patients found out.


One night a patient was binge-watching his favorite TV show when he got a sharp pain in his side. At first, he thought it was something he ate, but when it didn’t go away, he Googled his symptoms.


One website mentioned appendicitis as a possible cause for his pain. A few more clicks and this patient was able to find an easy, at-home test that he could perform on himself to see if he may need medical care: Push down on your lower abdomen and see if it hurts when you let go.


Sure enough, his pain shot through the roof when he pulled his hand away. So, the patient called our office, was triaged over the phone, and we sent him to the ER, where he had emergency surgery to remove his appendix.

Look to Google as your starting point, not your final answer

Ultimately, knowing that Google may not be the most reliable source to wade through for checking symptoms isn’t going to stop anyone from doing that. If you have something that you’re concerned enough about to Google, it’s probably something your doctor wants to know about, too.

Don’t delay actual care from medical professionals who have years of intense training for the comfort of Google. Sure, we’re living in a technological age, and a lot of us are far more comfortable telling Google about our symptoms than a real human. But Google isn’t going to look at your rash or care enough to work harder when you’re having a hard time finding answers.

So, go ahead, Google it. But then write down your questions, call your doctor, and talk to someone who knows how to tie all the pieces together.

Overall in my view (Conclusion)

Although Googling symptoms may feel like we’re relieving pressure on the NHS, so as not to bother GPs and health professionals with seemingly pointless problems, there are so many risks associated with self-diagnosis. Dr. Google could throw up any multitude of results and there’s no knowing if you’re getting the correct information.

"Google is not medically trained"

Some Doctors Conclusion 

“When a patient comes in for an appointment I don’t just listen to what they’re saying, I appraise their overall health, how they look and how they walked into the room, as well as carrying out clinical tests,” explains NHS and Benenden Hospital GP Dr. Karthika Shanmuganathan. “But with Google, it completely depends what you typed in for what diagnosis you’ll come up with. And Google is not medically trained.”

Despite the search engine’s lack of medical training, it doesn’t stop patients interrupting Dr. Shanmuganathan’s diagnoses during her GP practice. “At least twice a day in my NHS practice I will have patients telling me I must be wrong because Google told them otherwise,” she says. Other than the extra time this self-diagnosis uses up, it can also lead to elevated levels of anxiety.


“If you have a headache, and you see the doctor who diagnoses a tension headache, you can deal with it and move on. But if you type in headache and come up with brain tumor, that’s clearly going to lead to a heightened level of anxiety,” says Dr. Shanmuganathan, who wasn’t surprised that anxiety was the most-searched-for term. At least half of her daily appointments are related to mental health.