Letter: Doctors in terror

Tuesday 07 December 1999 19:02 EST

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Sir: So GPs are "plagued" (report, 6 December) by patients with "the same access to information that doctors have", because some of the information the patients acquire via the Internet may be "biased, inaccurate" or promotional?

What a sorry state British medicine is in, if rather than explain to, learn from, debate, disagree, engage with our patients, disappoint them even, we are "reduced to terror" by the information they want to discuss! Maybe my GP colleagues are more terrorised by the six minutes they have to cram a consultation in than by their patients being anxious about their symptoms and having taken the trouble to inform themselves and to think.

Dr MICHAEL MOUTOUSSIS M.R.C.Psych

London E17

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