What does the internet think of power in healthcare?

In order to assess how known the concept of power in healthcare was, a search was conducted to see if the key terms “Power” and “Healthcare” turned up results to do with the power struggle between doctors and patients. Three results out of ten gave something to do with power in healthcare.

Ryan, 17, an aspiring physicist said “The lack of power in medicine is rather alarming…

“…I would have thought that patients would have had more power over their own treatment. I think it is a huge step forward for the medical community attempting to rectify this problem. The search shows that many doctors do recognise this and are attempting to fix it. Three of the results out of ten shows that there is a great deal of interest in it, considering that Google Scholar would often turn up very unrelated results. I think that healthcare may change as a result of this.”

Natasha, 16, an aspiring medical student said “The concept of power in medicine is central to relations between patients and medical staff…

“…It seems that the power struggle in healthcare worldwide is less focused on the doctor, nurse, patient relationship and is in fact much wider. It is no longer a case that there is just one hierarchy in medicine. The patients still want a greater say in their treatment despite generally speaking them having the most power than ever before. I believe that medicine as a whole will continue to evolve through research in order to provide better care to the patients in terms of the power the patients believe they have so that eventually the all patients will be aware of the treatment that they undertake.

When you look up the top ten articles on Google Scholar about health and power you get a wide range of results from improving antipsychotic medication to increasing the imaging power available to radiographers. However, the evidence gathered from these articles show an underlying issue, which is that a lot of patients wish to have more power over their own healthcare and understand their treatment from a medical point of view. Another common theme that arose from this group of articles was the economic and international side of healthcare. A surprisingly large majority were not to do with the NHS showing that this power struggle in healthcare is a widespread problem. One that caught the eye was an article about the ways to fund the emergency services in Spain showing that the power issue also stems from the financial difficulties of a country. Another one of the articles which was particularly interesting from a worldwide point of view discussed how valuable overseas-qualified doctors are to the NHS.

From many different sources, we can determine that the articles all share two common themes between them, empowering patients so that they can be in charge of more of their own healthcare, and that it is a worldwide phenomenon, with six out of the ten articles reffering to an overseas place. While less widespread, three of the articles talked about empowering patients. However, with such a low sample size, three of them is still a significant proportion, and that means that there is a representation of medical power in the top ten articles.  One of the most common things talked about within medical power is the perceived power struggle between patients and doctors. However, the articles themselves show doctors wishing to give more power to the patients which is definitely a step in the right direction.

Overall, this means that while there is not a total representation of power in healthcare from searching “Healthcare” and “Power”, there are a number of results which show within the healthcare system worldwide there is power problem which needs to be addressed. The articles give a good spread of topics but power in medicine is still not a common topic. This means that power in healthcare is perhaps not as important as it should be despite getting significant results in the top ten articles showing that many believe there to be an issue with the power balance across all areas of medicine.