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4.1: Chapter Scenario - Doctor Internet

  • Page ID
    324665
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    Scenario \(\PageIndex{1}\)

    Your friend started feeling moderate pain in their abdomen and they came to you for advise. You're not a medical professional but you want to help calm them down. What do you do? Of course the easiest thing to do is to search online! You search for stomach pain but get too many sources. Here, you might be able to apply what we've learned and try new keywords; perhaps abdominal pain!

    As you search you find a number of .org websites that seem reliable. The problem is there are a lot of possibilities and you aren't a medical professional. How do you decide which possibilities are likely vs those that are unlikely? It could be anything from gas to a tumor! If you add more keywords, perhaps additional symptoms that they have, you might have better luck; but perhaps you need a better strategy.

    A Few Things to Consider
    1. Medicine is a very complicated topic; one where your friend probably needs an expert. However, your own searches might give you an idea of how long it's safe to wait before consulting a physician.
    2. In this scenario you spent some time with a hasty initial search, then more time refining things from there. Could this process have been planned out more efficiently?
    3. Are there situations where doing a hasty online search is just a total waste of time because public websites aren't likely to have what you need - such as if your friend's pain was severe?

    4.1: Chapter Scenario - Doctor Internet is shared under a CC BY-NC license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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