Rethinking the medical advice questions approach?

Question

As part of an answer on how to increase users' questions (How do we increase our questions per day?), Joe included an idea related to medical questions which I feel deserves some additional discussion.

Should we attempt to adjust obvious medical advice questions to be more broad and applicable? Would a set of well-referenced answers relating to (e.g.) "When do I need to worry about my child's fever" be a useful reference since it's broadly applicable, or cause more problems than it solves?

For related meta reading, please also see:

• Are questions about generic medical fundamental medical information on-topic?
• Medical questions: what is the line between on / off topic, and how should they be handled?
• do we need to avoid serious medical questions?

I think it would be worth thinking about whether we could approach these a bit differently, at least in the more complex cases. Of course, we can't offer medical advice - I think exactly one of us is an actual doctor, and she certainly can't give advice over the internet anyway - but we can perhaps approach these questions in a more welcoming way that perhaps leads to further engagement.

Similarly to the "sleep" question above, perhaps we can have a more well-defined page discussing medical issues, written from the point of view of a parent but with details helping a parent understand some of the more common medical situations they will encounter. Of course we can't tell them what to do with their child right now, but that doesn't mean we can't describe what a flu is, and what the common treatments are, so that they understand what their doctor is telling them to do - or perhaps instead of including that information on our page, we link to webmd or similar pages on other sites that cover the information effectively.

We also include some information that helps them to form a good question about medical issues that is acceptable here - we don't really cover that very well in any place a new user will find, including the Help Center. Give some examples of things we can help with, for example.

We also might want to consider allowing a few more questions on the medical side of things with the understanding that we won't answer directly with medical advice - nothing like "You should take your child..." or "You might want to take a temperature and ...", - but instead allowed to ask about similar experiences. Rather than What do I do if my child has a fever for a week even after the Doctor said nothing was wrong, which is still medical advice, we edit the question to the reasonable, Has anyone had experiences with their child having a fever for a long period of time while the doctor says nothing is wrong?

To a large extent, parents who come here with medical problems aren't coming here because they want a doctor - they're coming here because they're stressed and confused, and want reassurance that their child is normal. Allowing questions that are "medical advice" to instead be modified to "parental coping" might help lead them to be more engaged and get what they really need - reassurance that they're doing fine, they're making reasonable decisions, and their child's experiences are normal.

Answer 1

I would like to answer first as a user who happens to be a physician, then as a moderator; thanks for bearing with me.

As a doc, I'm not overly concerned with answering medical questions; I know when a referral is in order, what's an emergency, etc. What I fear (not only on this site) is users who think their advice is good when it's not. That is my major objection to personal medical questions. It is constantly drummed into doctors and other medical professionals to first do no harm; users don't suffer from such pangs of conscience.

A way to deal with this is to require good sources (not blogs) when answering medical questions, and down voting answers that don't list references and leaving comments. I only have one vote. That would mean others would have to vote and comment as well.

As a moderator, though, I think Joe makes some very good points that would, I believe, make the site more broadly appealing and user-friendly. As such, I think we should seriously consider implementing them. Rereading all of the above text, the only detail I would differ with is having a separate page with medical advice. Those are all over the Internet. I have no objection to this, but answering each user would, I think, be more attractive. People want to interact with other people - other parents who have faced problems with breastfeeding, bed wetting, and whether their doctor has sufficiently advised them - i.e. what to do when they doubt their doctor's advice (say what?!?). This is what we can offer parents that WebMD can't.

Answer 2

My answer is mostly a rehash of anongoodnurse's general idea, but here we go:

• If you make it ontopic, make it a Skeptics.SE model. Only answers explicitly backed by peer-reviewed research should be allowed for medical questions. In the most literal way, if an answer wouldn't pass a muster on Skeptics, it shouldn't pass here either. Up to an including asking Skeptics moderators to arbitrate (in case of major disagreement, or to help Parenting mods get into the groove - not to imply that they need handholing :)

  This approach would place extra high load on moderators, FYI, AND require active user side moderation.

  The difference from Skeptics is that, unlike Skeptics, you don't need a notable claim to ask the question.

• Also, please see if there's a huge scope overlap with https://health.stackexchange.com/

• Any time a question gets answered with popular but unreferenced advice, we can always easily take that advice as a "notable claim", and turn it into an excellent Skeptics.SE question - this allowing us to close the original one here if needed without leaving the original poster with no avenue of info.

Answer 3

It's a terrible idea unless the answer is "if you are concerned go see a doctor". If the doctor says they're not worried the answer here should be "ask your doctor why they're not worried".

Here's an example of a good answer (it has a single lonely upvote): https://parenting.stackexchange.com/a/20245/1385

I can accept that it might be useful to have a list of "when do i see a doctor?", but only as long as that list is supported by government level (eg US CDC or UK NHS, or NICE) recommendations.

This thread has people suggesting that research papers might be a suitable level of referencing. I politely but firmly disagree. Most of what we know is wrong; single research papers are a lousy source of advice.

To a large extent, parents who come here with medical problems aren't coming here because they want a doctor - they're coming here because they're stressed and confused, and want reassurance that their child is normal. Allowing questions that are "medical advice"

I dunno, I've seen plenty of questions from people who are seeking medical advice.