Patient education in Nuclear Medicine: is there a role for the World Wide Web?

Introduction: Patient education has evolved in recent years to be an important component of overall patient management. The WWW may provide the appropriate media for meeting the increasing expectations of patient education in nuclear medicine. Research Question: Does the WWW have a role to play in nuclear medicine patient education? Methodology: A questionnaire was designed to determine patient demographics, patient Internet connectivity and the level of satisfaction with current patient education. A total of 491 patients at a private, hospital based nuclear medicine department volunteered to complete the questionnaire. Results: The mean age of the study population was 60.4 years. Only 12 per cent of patients indicated that they had direct access to the Internet and this correlated closely with age. 37.7 per cent of patients indicated that they would use the WWW to obtain pre test patient information if it were available online. Only 42 per cent of patients indicated that they had received pre test patient information prior to their appointment of which 82 per cent were satisfied when information was received. Conclusion: While patients indicated general dissatisfaction with current practices in patient education and were enthusiastic to embrace the WWW as a media for improving it, the role of the WWW in patient education is currently limited by the level of Internet connectivity of the typical nuclear medicine patient.