Symptoms checkers should be cautious when checking their symptoms. It is always wise to see a doctor when not feeling well. Use a symptom checker only when really necessary. Remember – your health is important.
Source: pexels.com
So what are virtual health monitors? How do checkers do online symptom checking? Are they useful for emergency care? Learn more about these virtual symptom checkers and what possible conditions they can check here.
Dad would always take the entire family to check various conventions worldwide, so I had checked more places than most people since I was a kid. As children, my siblings and I were famous at school for having a father who checked any party we had in mind. If he had time, he would even join the gathering and share some stories about his job, which the other children found pretty cool.
Yes, I agree with all of them – Dad was the best. He had always encouraged my sisters and me to follow the curiosity bug and make surface of mistakes. If there was one thing that he forbade us from doing over the years, though, it was reading about our medical symptoms or using this tool (done, of course, by an online symptom checker). He always said that health is important and that if we have medical emergencies, we should seek professional medical advice and choose the proper treatment and diagnosis from a licensed physician, not from an online symptom checker. It doesn’t matter if it’s a simple skin rash, a little pain or headache, or something that requires urgent care. Treatment must be suggested by a healthcare professional.
You should have been there when my father learned that my sister used the internet to skip consultation and self-diagnose her dysmenorrhea and abdominal pain. My father got so mad that he grounded my sister for a week – but not before taking her to the location of a specialist to ask for advice about what was up with her menses and pain. On the way home, Dad said, “This is why I got angry when I learned that you were diagnosing yourself based on the information provided on the web. Many injuries and diseases appear with the same medical symptoms, like stroke and dizziness. It takes a real doctor to identify which condition you have and give an accurate diagnosis – not a symptom checker.”
From then on, no one spoke about electronic medical websites (or symptom checkers like Isabel symptom checker) in our house. Due to what happened to my sister, we also believed that Dad was 100% correct about not using whatever tool we find on the internet to diagnose our common signs and symptoms. Once when I had a sore throat, I knew better. I scheduled a consult especially because I had a fever. The doctor provided medical treatment and gave me a prescription for the medicine I needed to take for my fever. My dad praised me for setting a good example!
Checking Most Of My Symptoms Through Online
There was a time when my college friends and I had the ambition of building our version of Silicon Valley in Alaska. The four of us went there with our suitcases and laptops, determined to make it happen.
Before I even embarked on this journey, I had already taken all my shots because I knew that medical facilities would be scarce where we would go. I was correct that the people with a serious type of condition or those who required medical emergency had to be transported by air elsewhere for medical attention. Still, my worst fear happened when I caught the coronavirus in Alaska – a quarantine life I never expected or imagined. People checking about health virtually are discouraged from relying on electronic symptom checkers. They really don’t check symptoms accurately, they don’t give diagnoses, and they don’t treat, of course. They do not have the expertise that licensed healthcare professionals possess.
Checking for the list of symptoms virtually can be helpful but there are some that require personal diagnoses, most importantly the life-threatening symptoms. The tool should know when to stop looking.
In a normal circumstance, if I ever found myself in a medical situation, I would call Dad first. I would not check symptoms on the web. In this case, however, all our hands are tied. Besides seeing COVID-19 patients as highly contagious people, Dad’s colleagues advised me to stay put once they learned that I was not suffering from severe symptoms like extreme body fatigue, profused sweating, or pain. Even my father had no choice but to tell me to isolate and wait for the symptoms to subside. I could take and select the medication for fever and improve my health or some paracetamol if I would experience pain.
Since my friends got infected, we decided to quarantine them in the same house we lived in. It was fortunate that we had just refilled our groceries not too long ago, so we would have enough food for the next two weeks. The only annoying thing for us was not knowing the symptoms to expect and the next steps to take, so I broke my promise to Dad and read about the COVID-19 symptoms using the Isabel symptom checker, an artificial intelligence tool.
I realized that the medical websites had improved so much ever since my sister used them years ago. The Isabel symptom checker had real doctors writing the articles now. Aside from that, they had medical reviewers, too. Hence, all the symptoms I read about were valid.
According to a recent study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, an electronic symptom checker fails 66% of the time, and doctors are still far better than an online symptom checker. Well, obviously because the healthcare professional is a person, not a tool. Not only does he provide advice but also the proper treatment and diagnosis as well. Your health is significant to him, whatever age or gender you are.
The study was intended to compare healthcare professionals against an electronic checker. At a point when given similar data about the patient’s present manifestations, medical symptoms, and clinical history on stroke, specialists came to the right outcome 72% of the time. The effects and results of sign electronic tools didn’t do so well, returning with the right analysis in just 34% of the cases.
Final Thoughts
My right of learning about my condition and treatment – albeit on the web– eased my fear of the unknown, which is what matters most. Every patient was different regardless of age, but all the common symptoms were there. More importantly, the medical websites, as most users have observed, had tips on what to do when you get to a particular region or area of the illness, for example, if one’s abdominal pain became worse. It was undoubtedly helpful in keeping me from needing counseling because of COVID-19.
If it makes you anything safer, consult a specialist if have to.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How exact or precise are online checkers?
- What are some of the most commonly utilized online checkers?
- How does a virtual symptom checker work?
- How are symptom checkers used?
- Why are online virtual monitors important for one’s health?
- What are the benefits of using symptom checkers online?
- Are these virtual checkers accountable?
- When does self-diagnosis become a disadvantage?
- How much impact does social media have on self-diagnosis?
- Do virtual symptom checkers provide treatment and recommendations?