• Use a search engine of your choice to type in a health topic in which you are interested, e.g. diabetes, congenital heart defect.
• How many ‘hits’ did you get?
• Access the first five and read the information provided:
– do any of them have a quality assurance logo?
– if they do have a logo try to find the quality assurance tool used and critique it – if they do not have a logo, do your own assessment for quality using the CHIQ
format
– in your opinion how useful is the information that you found for a layperson?
Another issue that needs to be considered is access to the technology. The internet may be free in the library, but it is not free at home. Not everyone can or wants to own a computer and internet connection. We may be moving towards yet another area of inequality, identified in the USA as the digital divide (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion 2000). There are reasons to suspect that low- education, low-income groups are the least likely to access information and some
86 Information giving in health promotion
may have difficulty using the technology. There is also, as with the leaflets, the requirement to have reading and comprehension skills to make sense of the information provided, and a requirement to have the technical skills to acquire the information. In one survey it was found that 53 per cent of adults did not have the required skills to use IT (DoH 2004).
For midwives the internet may be an invaluable resource, but ensure the quality of the information. If web pages are being recommended, make sure that they are checked because they change frequently. Suggesting use of the internet for acquiring information comes with a responsibility to remind the users that the information provided in chat rooms and on some sites may be of a poor quality or inaccurate.
Midwives who suggest use of the internet should make themselves available to discuss issues that may be raised from the information found and to review the quality of the information retrieved.
SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS
■ When giving health information, think about using more than one format; it may help to make the message more understandable, e.g. verbal, written, use of video- or audio-tapes.
■ Before providing information to women or their families, consider carefully what you want to convey, where the information is being given and the amount of time that you have.
■ Midwives need to listen to women to find out their personal attitudes and opinions on health. Information may need to be repeated several times because, depending on the circumstances of the woman, she may or may not be ready to accept or use the information at that point.
■ The quality of the information is an important factor. Quality assurance is a time- consuming practice, but worth doing to ensure that clients have the best available information on which to base any health choices.
■ Quality applies to all modes of information provision. It is particularly relevant in mass media and the internet.
■ The mass media are a very powerful tool for providing information to a wide audience, but misinterpretations or misunderstandings can, and do, arise.
■ The internet provides access to vast amounts of information, some of which may be of poor quality. Midwives need to evaluate the quality of information that they may be given by women.
■ Spending time with women who bring information with them from the internet or who want to discuss something that they saw on television can be time-consuming, but will help women to make more informed choices.
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FURTHER READING
Antony D (1996) Health on the Internet.Oxford: Blackwell.
Watterson A (2003) Public Health in Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.