Providing Systematic Training for Patient Support Groups

Abstract

Patient support or self-help groups (SHG) provide essential support for patients and families dealing with particular conditions. Increasingly, these groups use the Internet to find information to support their own activities and to promote self-care. Librarians can play an important role in demonstrating to these groups how to locate and evaluate high-quality information on the Internet. This paper describes a project that provided such demonstrations to 5 support groups organized by a local hospital system in central Texas, the issues involved, the evaluation method, and the outcomes. Aggressive advertising appears to be one of the biggest deterrents to locating suitable health care information on the Internet.

Key Words:

• Support groups
• self-help groups
• Texas
• consumer health
• patient education
• training