Abstract
Abstract: :
Purpose: To identify the prevalence of internet use for accessing health information within the population of patients attending ophthalmology outpatients, to assess the perceived reliability of that information and to evaluate the potential for improvement in patient education by use of the internet. Methods: Patients attending the outpatient department were asked to fill in the standard questionnaire. Results: 201 patients answered the questionnaire. 40.3% had access to the internet. 39% of patients with internet access used the internet to obtain information relating to health. 50% of patients spent less than one hour and 12.50% more that three hours on the web accessing health information. 19.17% of patients without access to the internet had help from another person/s to gain health information for them. 41.8% thought that the information on the internet was generally reliable. 66% of patients would use internet to gain information about their ocular condition if their ophthalmologist recommended it. Conclusions: The availability of access to the inernet in our outpatient population was lower than predicted by previous studies in UK and US. Although a significant proportion of patients already obtain information about ocular conditions from internet there is indication that 66% would use this form of education if this was recomended by their ophthalmologist. This study suggests that further development of well designed reliable internet sites would provide a significant improvement in patient education, and may lead to more efficient ophthalmology outpatient consultations.
Keywords: clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: health care delivery/economics/manpower • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: systems/equipment/techniques • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: prevalence/incidence