Doctors increasingly have to dissuade patients from medical misinformation found online

Doctors are facing more and more medical misinformation in their practices. They increasingly have to dissuade patients from false claims they heard on social media like that whooping cough is beneficial for a child’s development, deodorant can make you sick, and sunscreen is carcinogenic, NOS reports after surveying 670 doctors with the doctors’ federation KNMG.

Over half (55 percent) of the surveyed doctors speak to a misinformed patient at least once a week. For 14 percent, it’s a daily occurrence. Misinformation about vaccinations, allergies, vitamins, and contraception is most common, according to the respondents.

“It is a huge burden for doctors,” KNMG chairman René Héman told NOS. “The workload is already so high. Providing good information takes time and that can be at the expense of patient care. Doctors do not want that and that causes stress.”

General practitioner Anneke Aarts is one of the doctors who deals with misinformation every day. “It mainly concerns hormones, vaccinations, and things like vitamin B12. You have to find out where the patient got it from, and what he or she read about it,” Then she often has to convince them that what they looked up was incorrect. “It takes a lot of time to redirect people, and some cannot be convinced. People do not always accept what you say. Then those conversations can be very annoying.”

According to the GP, she increasingly sees patients who looked up everything online and now think they know exactly what is ailing them. “They only come to the practice so that I can prescribe the pills or the scan that they think they need. Patients are more often distrustful and people think they know better.”

Doctors in the Netherlands are using social media to fight these medical myths. For example, a group of doctors launched an online campaign against vaping, and the Dokters Vandaag account on TikTok answers frequently asked questions. Outgoing State Secretary Maarten van Ooijen (Public Health) also proposed using doctors and other experts as influencers to combat misinformation about vaccines.