Linguistic and patient legal compliance of patient information in the "Doctor answers" section of a health internet portal

Abstract

• 13 of the CLIV of 1997 on health Act states that "The patient has the right to receive information in a way that is understandable to him, taking into account his age, education, knowledge, state of mind, and wishes expressed in this regard". On the other hand, the second most common violation of patient rights is the violation of the right to information, as the information is inadequate and often incomprehensible to the patient. In such cases, patients and their relatives often look for answers to their questions on the Internet in various forums. The study examines the questions related to locomotor diseases and the answers given to them in the "Doctor Answers" section of a health portal, webbeteg.hu, from the aspect of medical language use. We performed our analysis on a corpus compiled from medical responses from June 2017 to March 2020 and from March 2020 to June 2022. In the medical responses prior to the coronavirus epidemic, specialists often used foreign terms to name diseases, lesions, anatomical names, or examination and treatment methods, even when the lack of a proper Hungarian did not justify this. In the answers, the conditional mood, first-person plural predicate, general subject or impersonal, passive sentence appeared many times. The mostly general wording also did not meet the requirement of full information provided in "individualized form" prescribed by law. In the last three years, the quality of medical responses has improved a lot in terms of legal requirements, especially in terms of relevance and empathy. First-person singular statements and notices addressed directly to the patient have also been published. Although the turnaround cannot be directly linked to the coronavirus epidemic, it can be concluded that the epidemic measures and the difficulties in accessing a doctor intensified the favorable process, and online medical advice will continue to be an important area of patient information.