Is It Ethical To Google Your Patients?
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
A Penn State University study indicates there are few situations where it’s acceptable to use Google to research a patient - and ultimately caution against the practice.
Researchers from Penn State University recently asked when it’s permissible to use Google as a research tool to look up patients. While they found the majority of situations to be unacceptable, there were certain cases where they agreed it could be necessary.
“Many physicians would agree that seeking information about their patients via Google seems to be an invasion of privacy, violating trust between patients and their healthcare providers,” explain researchers in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. “However, it may be viewed as ethically valid, and even warranted under certain circumstances.”
According to iHealth Beat, researchers outlined 10 scenarios where a physician might acceptably use Google to gain more insight into his patient. A few of these included when doctors have a responsibility to warn of possible harm; when patient's story seems improbable; or when there are concerns of suicide risk or abuse. “The motivation is to protect patients and prevent harm,” said Maria Baker, paper co-author and a Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute genetics counselor.
Reuters reports in one case, a doctor was suspicious of an unbelievable family history of cancer one woman claimed and the fact that she demanded to have both breasts removed before undergoing genetic testing. After a Google search, her doctor found she “was presenting her cancer story at lay conferences, giving newspaper interviews, and blogging about her experience as a cancer survivor. Additionally, the patient was raising funds, perhaps fraudulently, to attend a national cancer conference.” Without further genetic testing to prove her need for the surgery, her doctors informed her they were uncomfortable with the situation.
Despite the good intentions of looking for further information online, they do admit that such a practice could undermine trust between doctors and patients. Daniel George, paper co-author and an assistant professor of medical humanities at Penn State University College of Medicine, said, “There is something worth protecting in the physician-patient relationship.”
One case where using Google could undermine this trust is if a patient who tells his doctor his lives a healthy smoke-free lifestyle, then the doctor Googles him only to find a picture of him smoking a cigar.
Mildred Solomon, president of the Garrison, New York-based bioethics institute The Hastings Center, believes the researchers were too lenient when it comes to what situations are acceptable for looking up patients online. She says “incongruent statements by the patient, or between a patient and family members,” happen much too often to warrant frequent Google searches.
The authors hoped to create more dialogue about the subject. “I think this is just a starting point,” George said. “Every conversation has to start with something. This is the raw clay that we hope the field sculpts into set guidelines.”