Googling your treatment for analgesia in labour

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7544.795-c

BMJ 2006;332:795 (1 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7544.795-c

Letter

Googling your treatment for analgesia in labour

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Giustini described how Google has become the mostpowerful influence in searching the internet.¹ In a recent observationalstudy on the labour ward at University College Hospital, London,we found that 33% of pregnant women used the internet as a sourceof information about labour pain relief. This is a change fromthe results of a previous study conducted five years ago inLiverpool, in which the internet had been used by less than3% of pregnant women.²

We wondered what expectant mothers would find on "Googling yourtreatment."¹ When searching for health information, patientsare known to look only at the first few links after their search,and very few of them later remember from which websites theyretrieved information or by whom the sites were created.³

We feared that the one third of pregnant women using the internetwere accessing information that was inaccurate and potentially. . . [Full text of this article]

James Holding, research fellow

Centre for Anaesthesia, University College Hospital, London NW1 2BU james.holding@uclh.nhs.uk

Michael V Holmes, foundation year 1 trainee in anaesthesia

Centre for Anaesthesia, University College Hospital, London NW1 2BU

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