negotiating online health information with physicians

[netwoman]

one of things that i've seen come up;

people are looking for health information online more and more. they often take the information they've found (and sometimes self-diagnose) to their doctors. Some doctors are resistant - in the sense that they resist or challenge this online information collection process.

In my own experience, i had one doctor (about 1.5 years ago) who was quite annoyed with the information that i brought to the office; i asked questions - i have this symptom - could it be this - this - or that? He was bitchy to say the least (saying, it's none of that - don't jump to conclusions etc). did i challenge his 'authority'?

On the flip side, i had a situation where i did the same thing - no, i'm not an unhealthy person - i came with questions, listened to what the dr had to say and then i asked - what about 'this'? in this situation, he said well that's a good suggestion - let's do more tests...

so, i guess my point is - if this process of seeking health information online is going to work - we need to think about how this changes our relation with physicians and what that might mean to doctors and what that might mean to everyone else.....