Hypochondria.com (nhsdirect.nhs.uk)

Member Name: merv

Product:	nhsdirect.nhs.uk
Date:	26/02/03 (558 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Comprehensive, Nicely set out, Easy to access information

Disadvantages: Supermarket for hypochondriacs

I popped into my Doctor’s surgery last week to pick up a prescription and while I was waiting I browsed through the masses of literature they had on display. You know the sort of thing ‘How to give up smoking’, ‘How to reduce your blood pressure’, ‘How to stop worrying about all the ailments you’ll never get.’ Pretty morbid stuff really, I came out of there quite depressed, feeling I should have made an appointment to see the Doctor on the off-chance that I had some plague or other.

In amongst the leaflets I’d picked up for more detailed scrutiny in the comfort of my own home, I came across a business card advertising the NHS Direct web site. Seeing as I was already in hypochondriac mode I decided to have a look and this is what I found.

This site is the online version of NHS Direct, a twenty-four hour telephone helpline led by NHS nurses, which offers information and advice to patients and the public at large. The online service which is also an information resource does not offer consultations as such, but sifts through over 100,000 health related web sites and recommends those that offer good quality information. It is based on an initiative, which has worked well in the USA where its equivalent healthfinder.gov has proved to be very successful. The aim of the site is to put a variety of reliable health information resources at your fingertips, helping you to make informed choices about your health and lifestyles.

Easily accessible, the Homepage is simple to navigate with a menu strip down the side of the screen and an explanation of the contents in each section. The site is very simple to use, easy to understand and provides information which you can trust, unlike some of the health sites I’ve visited which seem to be very keen on selling you something.

It has a number of special features:

An Online Encyclopaedia

This is a very comprehensive guide
to over four hundred common medical conditions, containing information on illnesses, conditions, tests and treatments along with explanatory diagrams and images. It is intended to complement the NHS Direct Self Help Guide, which focuses on common symptoms.

I have suffered in the past from Menieres Disease, a distressing and debilitating condition which is similar to vertigo. Thankfully I only used to get infrequent attacks, which didn’t last long, unlike some poor sufferers who have to live with this recurring nightmare. I looked it up in the encyclopaedia and a found a comprehensive and detailed description of the ailment along with some very useful links.

A Self Help Guide

This section provides advice on ‘what to do next’ for a range of common symptoms, plus background information on minor ailments and guidance on what you should have in your medicine cabinet. Its aim is to be the first step to help you decide the best course of action when a common health problem arises.

It offers a ‘body key’ as a means of assessing what symptoms you or the sufferer may have and then asks a series of questions in order to establish what advice and action you need to follow, which may be either self care, calling NHS Direct or dialing 999. Where the guide suggests self care, it tells you what to do, what you can buy from a chemist that may help and organizations to contact for further advice

You may have read my previous favourable review on NHS Walk in Centres when I explained how my son had been taken ill with kidney stones, which had been successfully diagnosed by the Walk in Centre’s nurse. I thought I’d input his symptoms and see what the self-help guide came up with. Sure enough it said it could be either kidney stones or a kidney infection. I was impressed, particularly as his doctor hadn’t come up with the possibility, when first he noticed the pain.

Healthy living
>
This section provides tips on achieving lifestyle changes to help you live longer, feel and look better and reduce your chances of falling ill plus a separate section on reducing the risk of a long list of major conditions including various cancers, depression, heart disease, HIV and AIDS, Osteoporosis, sexually transmitted diseases and accidents. It covers the usual suspects – diet, nutrition, exercise, smoking, alcohol, stress, as well as raising other less attributed factors such as poverty and social exclusion and has a series of healthy living quizzes to help indicate where you may be at risk.

The advice here is concise, very good and well cross referenced where appropriate to other tips from the NHS.

Local National Health Services

The website has full details of GPs, walk-in centres, pharmacies (chemists) and dentists, plus contact details for all Health Authorities and NHS Trusts in England. I checked on my local practice for my own GP who has very recently retired to find it was up to date – his replacement was listed with the correct telephone number. I think this is important and says a lot about a website.

Health Information Enquiry

There is also a facility for sending a health information enquiry by completing a simple form. It will be researched by a health professional and you will be given an individual response within 5 working days from receipt.

Health Information Gateway

The health information gateway is a directory of links to selected websites and other health information resources. There is also access to an NHS magazine, regularly updated news articles about health trawled from sources such as the BBC, GMTV and The Guardian, and a huge News Archive. This was right up to date when I checked, the main topic being the need for more GP’s.

Audio Clips

Constantly updated with new information, this section offers more than 200 audio clips ranging
from 3 to 10 minutes on a very wide range of health topics. Real audio is required to hear them, which if you haven’t got it can be downloaded from the link provided. Some pieces are available in Asian languages including Urdu and Bengali.

Contact a family directory

This is the on line version of the definitive directory of self-help and support groups for unusual and rare conditions.

FAQ

This offers a variety of answers to what are apparently very common questions about health conditions and lifestyle choices and in a separate section the NHS. It also suggests articles and links for further information. The links are to literally 1000’s of sources of help, advice and articles from as far afield as the National Library for Health to commercial sites such as the Lonely Planet which you can use for tips on travel health.


This is without doubt one of the most informative UK websites I’ve seen, ranking along the BBC site for comprehensiveness and ease of use. Used sensibly this could be an incredibly useful resource and a superb example of how the internet can be a factor for good. In this respect a neighbour of mine who is a consultant at the local hospital told me that the internet had revolutionized his speciality because it had made easy the cross-pollination of ideas.

My only concern is that in the wrong hands this site could be dangerous. There is the chance that people would not go to see their GP when they had something potentially serious because of false confidence attributed to their own diagnosis. Alternatively a little knowledge could be a dangerous thing with people assuming the worst because of the wide range of ailments on offer, a sort of supermarket for hypochondriacs.

On balance though I think it is an excellent resource, which could ease the pressure on the diminishing number of GP’s we’ve recently been hearing about.

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