When facing a disease as complicated as cancer, it's easy to become confused by the volumes of information you are given. Your health care team, well-meaning friends and family members, and even casual acquaintances will offer books, pamphlets, website links, and other forms of information about cancer and how best to manage it.
If all of this leaves you bewildered and overwhelmed, you're not alone. Fortunately, a little training on how to find and use credible, reliable health information can go a long way toward helping you find the answers you need.
The latest research on how people seek and use health information provides encouraging results:
Even a small amount of training or a short class or session on how to use the internet results in a measurable improvement in the ability to evaluate information on health websites, and find credible health resources online. And this improvement resulted in patients seeking and getting better health care.
If you want to find good quality health information online, but don't know where to begin, there are a few steps you can take to get the ball rolling:
- Ask if your health center or cancer care clinic has a patient library or patient information resource center. Patient libraries typically are staffed by trained health information specialists who can help you sort fact from fiction.
- Ask if your health center offers a class on how to best use the internet for seeking health information. Many cancer centers and hospitals do offer these classes on a regular basis, often for free.
- Learn some of the key things that can help you separate the good quality websites from the "not so good".
- Check out our resource list of helpful colon cancer website.
- Ask your nurse or doctor if they have a standard list of websites they recommend patients use to learn the basics about their disease and treatment options.
