THE PHENOMENON OF THE "INFORMED PATIENT": ACCESS TO HEALTH-CARE CONTENT AVAILABLE ON THE WEB AND RECONFIGURATIONS IN THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN HEALTH-CARE PROFESSIONALS AND USERS

Abstract

The popularization of the internet has significantly expanded access to information, giving rise to a more active and well-informed society. In the health area, it is possible to find, on the web, more and more information available about diseases, symptoms, diagnoses, prevention, medicines, treatment, professionals, etc. This has given rise to a more informed, active, questioning and critical user, who seeks information about their health on the internet, in order to gain more autonomy in the face of these processes: the “expert patient” or the “informed patient”. This research aims to identify and analyze the forms of interaction between people (users and health professionals in general) and health content available on the internet, seeking to understand the changes and reconfigurations that access to this information has been promoting in relationships between users of health systems, professionals and services in general. This is a qualitative research of an ethnomethodological nature, which was based on a bibliographical review and a field study, organized in two stages: an exploratory one, with the application of an online questionnaire, and a systematic one, with interviews in depth. The analysis of the research results was based on the methodology adapted from the Collective Subject Discourse (CSD), according to Lefèvre, which made it possible to create the categories. Through a cross-sectional analysis of the collected material, it was possible to identify numerous aspects that surround the search for health information on the web. Among them, the autonomy and “empowerment” of users, who, in an attempt to move towards the humanization of health care, begin to seek contributions from external means, in order to satisfy their desires and needs, to fill the gaps left by the services of health and to find other agents to place trust and credibility.