Cognition and Experience of Patients with Diabetes Mellitus to Obtain Health Information Through the Internet: A Qualitative Study (Preprint)
BACKGROUND The rapid development of the Internet has been providing more convenient information services for patients with diabetes mellitus and more and more patients choose to obtain diabetes-related information through the Internet. The different quality of health information on the Internet often makes it difficult for patients to obtain real and effective information. OBJECTIVE To further understand the cognition and experience of patients with DM to obtain health information through the Internet. METHODS Objective sampling method was adopted to select patients with DM in a grade 3A hospital in Changsha from August to September, 2020. Phenomenological research method in qualitative research was used to conduct semi-structured interviews. Colaizzi seven-step analysis was used to analyze the interview data and extract the topics. RESULTS A total of 13 patients were interviewed in this study. The cognition and experience of patients with DM on access to online health information can be divided into three major themes and seven sub-themes: (1) motivations for Internet information acquisition, which include perceived information does not match demands and finding the experience of others; (2) Internet Information acquisition requirements, including acquiring knowledge related to DM and obtaining information efficiently; and (3) obstacles to online information access, including doubt the authenticity of network information, difficult to judge the true or false information and limited eHealth literacy. CONCLUSIONS This study shows that there are both facilitating factors and impeding factors in patients’ accessing diabetes-related information on the Internet, which suggests that medical staffs should guide patients to obtain real and effective health information, the government should strengthen the construction of health websites to enhance patients’ experience of obtaining online health information to make better use of the advantages of the Internet.