16
votes
Should Tildes have rules for healthcare advice?
Sometimes Tildes users give people healthcare advice. Sometimes that advice disagrees with the advice already given by a qualified registered healthcare professional. That might be okay if the tildes advice was compliant with national guidance, but sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's bad, dangerous, advice.
Should Tildes have rules about this?
Tildes is an international lot, so national guidelines would make things a bit difficult.
In general, unless someone explicit claims they are a healthcare professional (and even then, it's the internet), I'd assume that that person isn't and treat any advice as an unprofessional anecdotal thing.
I think unless we'd implement a blanket "no healthcare advice" rule, it would be too hard to police.
The national guidelines bit isn't to make sure that advice is applicable in every country where Tildes is used, it's to slow people down a bit before posting inflammatory and incorrect advice.
There's a big difference between "here's what I reckon" and "here's what I reckon, and that's supported by this national standards organisation here".
Maybe it's less important now, but at the beginning of the pandemic this would mean you shouldn't recommend wearing a mask because the CDC didn't recommend it. Sometimes official guidance moves slowly.
I think we should be able to cover what expert Twitter is talking about and that's often ahead of official recommendations. That's different from giving personal advice, though.
I think we should also be careful not to demonize medical advice too quickly just because such stuff is better done by a professional. I agree that disagreeing with evidence-based official guidance is definitely a smell. I also think that some topics can not and will not be covered by such guidance. Those topics should be free to be discussed. I can't imagine such an official body outlining the conditions under which you should get a second opinion, so recommending someone on here should get a second opinion should not at all be off limits.
In general though, I have enough faith in this community to self-regulate. Giving bad medical takes should be dealt with in discussion and not through mod action.
I thought it was done to prevent a run on masks before supplies were secured for medical facilities?
The debate seems to have been more complicated than that. It was tied in with the aerosols versus droplets scientific debate and wanting to.make sure health providers get masks.
Medical advice is given by a doctor of medecine, after physical examination.
This should be the one and only rule, and pop up every time the conversation veers that way.
No there is no need for a rule. It's an unwritten rule that anything you find on the internet is 100% true and you should trust it.