A great deal has changed in patient care over the last decade or so. The number of patients coming in with articles from various websites and claiming uncommon diseases discovered through symptom checker on WebMD has increased. As we all know information and knowledge are power and that is something that many patients hunger for when feeling so helpless in regard to their own care. However, greater access to information does not mean an increase in quality, and thus many of us are faced with combating an inevitable cycle of misinformation passed from social media, Wikipedia, and “medical” websites lacking references. Many of the mothers we meet with are well-informed patients, and want to have access to credible information to help guide them through the adventures of breastfeeding. With that very notion at mind ILCA and SAGE Publications are pleased to announce the roll-out of our Patient Access offering for the Journal of Human Lactation. This feature allows individuals the availability to request free access to research for personal use via an article’s login/challenge page. SAGE will monitor and track all requests and supply individuals with PDFs of their chosen articles.
The Patient Access feature allows patients, their family members and anyone interested in learning more about a specific disease or its treatment to access your journal’s most important new research articles. Although research articles should never replace a patient’s consultation with a primary or specialist physician, SAGE and ILCA believe that access to this information can educate and empower our readers to learn more about diseases and conditions.
We hope that this new feature will give lactation consultants another tool in their kit when working with families.
You can view our request interface and learn more at http://jhl.sagepub.com/site/includefiles/patient_inform.xhtml
