Pt. family & internet medical education

Oh, my stars!

God preserve us from patients' relatives and their enquiring minds!

Truly, it is said, a little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing.

Keep the faith, people.

But then if we didn't use jargon, and dead languages, to confuse them in the first place?

Indeed so, this is an arguable point. There are, however, those
patients and their kith and kin who are, quite frankly, a flamin'
pain in the butt, irregardless of how low-brow you have to go in
order to disseminate your information or, indeed, answer endless
pointless question after another.

Before you jump to any conclusion that I am being an elitist git, I have to say in my defence that I have just finished the last thirteen hour shift in a string of four at a particularly busy Trauma ITU and have had the most harrowing time with the family of a young GSW injury who didn't make it. Six hours solid work on him plus a further two with a spectacularly unhelpful and obstructive family, trying to help them and getting truckloads of abuse. I'm sure this wasn't in my contract!

If this has turned into a moan then, please, be assured I am not always such an old curmudgeon. I just feel the need to howl at the moon. Having had this moan now, I feel much better. Thanks.

Please stand by. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Forgive the smart remark, fellow celt! Families from hell are indeed, the bane of all our lives! As to the original post, there's a word for it..........Cyberchondria!........... since web access increased, so has this syndrome. Any one with a vague collection of symptoms can trawl the internet in seconds, where it used to take days with a medical encyclopaedia, and come up with all sorts of off the wall rarities.