The e-patient and medical students

Abstract

The recent publicity around the tragic case of Bronte Doyne has highlighted a pressing need in healthcare delivery: the need for doctors to know that their patients, “e-patients,” know medicine. In turn, this requires our medical students to be trained in how best to utilise the potential of e-patients in healthcare delivery.

“I can't begin to tell you how it feels to have to tell an oncologist they are wrong, it's a young person's cancer. I had to, I'm fed up of trusting them.” – Bronte Doyne (Vize 2015)

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers of a previous version of this paper.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Notes on contributor

KEN MASTERS, FDE, PhD, teaches in the Medical Education and Informatics Unit, College of Medicine, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. Teaching about the e-patient is a crucial part of his curriculum. His research interests are medical education and teaching medical informatics. He is the co-author of AMEE’s Guide to e-learning.