The following is a summary of “How do patients with high cardiovascular risk evaluate online health information? A qualitative study,” published in the November 2023 issue of Primary Care by Lim, et al.
People can get different kinds of health knowledge on the Internet, which could affect how they make decisions and act about their health. People still need help telling the difference between good and bad online health information (OHI). For a study, researchers sought to look at how people with high cardiovascular risk judge and decide to trust OHI linked to statins. Vignettes and think-alouds were used in this qualitative study. They chose people from a general care center who were at least 18 years old, had a high risk of heart disease, and had already looked for OHI.
Two scenarios were given to the participants: Vignette 1 had low-quality information, and Vignette 2 had high-quality information. The participants said out loud what they thought as they read the stories and used a 5-point Likert scale to rate the amount of trust in each one. After this, a semi-structured conversation was filmed and typed up word for word. The tapes were coded, and theme analysis was used to look at them. About 20 people were asked to participate, and their ages ranged from 38 to 74. Around 8 people with a high cardiovascular risk already had a cardiovascular disease. For Vignette 1 (bad information), five people trusted it, while 9 people needed to find out if they trusted it or not. 17 of the participants (85%) believed Vignette 2 (good information).
The way patients assessed OHI was broken down into five themes: logical content, neutral stance and tone of OHI content, the trustworthiness of the information source, consistency with what the patients already knew and experienced, and confirmation with information from other sources. Patients with a high risk of heart disease looked at the content, the reliability of the source, and the regularity of the material when deciding how much they could believe statin-related OHI. When talking to patients about online false information about statins, doctors should take a more personalized approach by taking into account what the patients already know, believe, and have experienced with taking statins.
Source: bmcprimcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12875-023-02182-7