Tech Savvy Patients? Think Again

Lisa Stiles / Mar 17th / Comments

The fact that you’re reading this blog means you already belong to the online world. Of course you’ve got a Facebook profile, LinkedIn account, and Twitter followers. You probably have a blog as well. The fact that you have a Web site is a given. Our world fast-paced, and it’s easy to cocoon yourself into thinking everyone connects the same way you do.

Yet while the online world grows, there is still a population out there who isn’t part of it and, frankly, never will be. This was made clear to me last week when I spent an exhausting day taking my 84-year old grandmother to the hospital for a transesophageal echocardiogram. After the procedure, the physician handed her a DVD, told it to take it to her cardiologist, and reminded her to tell him to make sure he turned off his pop-up blocker so he could view it.

“What’s a pop-up blocker?” Grandma nervously asked me later, thinking it had something to do with her meds. Her throat was sore, she was still groggy from the anesthesia, and her wrists were aching from the four attempts “to get a good stick” for her IV. Now she thought there was something else wrong with her.

Point is, don’t make any assumptions about how tech savvy a patient is. It was easy to explain to her the comment had nothing to do with her health, but if I hadn’t been there she would have continued to worry about, wonder if she needed to write it down, and then fret about insurance covering it – all due to a remark that had absolutely nothing to do with her health.

Often, it’s the least “connected” who are the most intimidated about asking their physicians to explain something simply because they don’t want to expose their ignorance. My grandmother will probably never own a computer but, at her age, she will see her physicians constantly. It would help if they understood what she doesn’t.