The Online Health Information Seeking and Its Impacts on the Communication with Health Professionals

Background and Purpose:  The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between online health information seeking (OHIS) and communication with health professionals (HP). Many people are usually dependent on health information provided by health professionals because they highly trust medial information from health professionals, such as physicians and nurses. However, patients often experience negative communication with the HP. In these situations, patients not only supplement their limited knowledge about their health care with health information seeking via the Internet, but also use the information to have better communication with their HP.

Methods: We used the Health Information National Trends Survey fifth, Cycle 1 collected by the National Cancer Institute (2018). Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to adjust for baseline differences and reduce confounding effects between OHIS and non-OHIS groups. For PSM, selected variables were as follows: age, gender, education, occupation status, marital status, race, income, self-rated health, confidence in getting health information, and trust to internet. The final sample sizes in this research were 602 (301 OHIS and 301 non-OHIS). A hierarchical OLS multiple regression was employed to examine the group differences in the communication with HP after adjusting covariates. A baseline model, including covariates, were estimated. In Model 2, trust to doctors was entered to control the reciprocal relationship between trust to doctors and communication with HP. OHIS was entered in Model 3.

Results: In Model 1, better self-rated health, higher confidence in getting health information were significantly associated with better communication with HP. In Model 2, higher trust in doctors significantly predicted better communication with HP. In Model 3, better self-rated health, higher confidence in getting health information, higher trust in doctors, and having OHIS were significantly associated with better communication with HP. These results mean that OHIS leads to better communication with HP.

Conclusions and Implications: Social workers frequently work with vulnerable people who are members of underserved populations, who lack adequate resources, or who have lower levels of education. These populations may not get enough health information from the health care system or face negative communications with HP because of their vulnerability. In health care settings, the role of the Internet has been crucial for people with vulnerability because the Internet is regarded as a convenient means to disseminate health information. This research gives evidence about how OHIS can be applicable to health care settings, especially for people facing negative of insufficient communications with HP.