Doctors,patients and the search for the truth on the Internet

The overnight availability of huge amounts of medical information from the internet has dramatically affected patients and doctors, and has swiftly highlighted a pressing need to deal with the problem of assessing the validity of such information. A number of further issues arise from this, most notably the questionable practice of selling supposed 'miracle cures' via the Internet. The introduction of measures that ensure the regulation of health-related websites has to be a priority for the health care profession. It is important not only to protect patients, and reduce the amount of doctors' time that is wasted, but also to allow confidence to develop in the reputable sites that exist. Such sites can provide accurate and useful information and can help to assemble supportive health-related communities on-line; facets that could be of great benefit to both patients and doctors alike.     

Trust and truth: uncertainty in health care practice

Uncertainty is the ubiquitous presence across health care. It is usually understood in terms of decision making, ‘knowing’ the correct diagnosis or understanding how the human body works. Using the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Georges Canguilhem and Tim Ingold, I outline a story of journeying and habitation, and argue that while uncertainty for practitioners may be about enhancing theoretical knowledge, for patients it is about knowing how to act in a taken‐for‐granted and largely unconscious way in a world that has become uncertain, and in which the main tool of action, the human body, no longer functions with the certainty it once had. In this situation, the role of the practitioner is first and foremost to recognize the uncertainty that has emerged in the patient's ‘habitation’ and to reassure them by enabling them to have a new or restored confidence in their body so that they can act with certainty.