Why Online Physician Participation Counts

 

The prickly topic of acupuncture & other alternative therapies

In a previous blog entry, we addressed the dilemma of a physician using a personal blog to add his or her two cents to a medical controversy. For a classic example, I turn to acupuncture, one of those very sharp double-edged swords of reproductive medicine.

From my observation, there has been insufficient research data to show that acupuncture is directly effective for fertility treatments. Yet droves of fertility patients enthusiastically pursue it along with the so-called “alternative” or “supplementary” therapies of yoga and massage.

In our research, Google’s statistics indicate that the topic of acupuncture and fertility is about 60 times more interesting to infertility sufferers than even the subject of cancer and fertility. We can document this by looking at the number of Google searches on the Web for each topic.

Don’t just stand there – say something

The inescapable finding is that prospective patients are going to be all over the Web chatting about acupuncture and fertility with or without doctor participation. Isn’t it better to have some kind of physician participation than none?

I’d like to find ways to ease physician discomfort over public discussion of such subjects. No one is saying to use a blog to endorse acupuncture as a proven medical therapy, because it’s probably not one.

But you as physician expert can blog about what you as an experienced clinician do know about these topics. Specifically to acupuncture, doctors acknowledge that it can ease the stress of infertility, and that itself is of value.

Meanwhile, you as fertility expert can say to infertility sufferers, it will almost certainly be disappointing to expect acupuncture by itself to end years of infertility.

In the language of a famous politician noted for his malapropisms, don’t mis-under-estimate the value of that message to the medical layman.