Community-based online survey on seeking care and information for lower limb pain and injury in Australia: an observational study.

OBJECTIVES: Musculoskeletal pain is a leading cause of disability globally. In geographically and socioeconomically diverse countries, such as Australia, care seeking when someone experiences musculoskeletal pain is varied and potentially influenced by their individual characteristics, access to practitioners or perceived trustworthiness of information. This study explored how consumers currently access healthcare, how well it is trusted and if sociodemographic factors influenced healthcare utilisation. DESIGN: Anonymous online observational survey. SETTING: Australia. PARTICIPANTS: A convenience sample of 831 community-based individuals (18+ years). OUTCOME MEASURES: Descriptive analyses and generalised estimating equations were used to quantify healthcare-seeking behaviours, sources and trust of health information for (A) first-contact practitioners, (B) medical practitioners, and (C) other sources of information. RESULTS: Of the 761 respondents, 73% were females, 54% resided in capital cities. 68% of respondents had experienced pain or injury in more than one lower limb joint. Despite this, more than 30% of respondents only sought help when there had not been natural resolution of their pain. Physiotherapists had the highest odds of being seen, asked and trusted for healthcare information. The odds of seeking care from general practitioners were no higher than seeking information from an expert website. Older individuals and women exhibited higher odds of seeking, asking and trusting health information. CONCLUSION: Intelligible and trustworthy information must be available for consumers experiencing lower limb pain. Individuals, particularly younger people, are seeking information from multiple, unregulated sources. This suggests that healthcare professionals may need to invest time and resources into improving the trustworthiness and availability of healthcare information to improve healthcare quality.

Does a picture tell a thousand words? The uses of digitally produced, multimodal pictures for communicating information about Alzheimer's disease.

This study explored the science communication potential of visual imagery by gauging an audience's interpretations of digitally enhanced, multimodal pictures depicting topics from recent Alzheimer's disease research. Guided by social semiotic theory, we created four pictures intended to communicate information about Alzheimer's disease unidirectionally, for an audience who had expressed interest in receiving such information (subscribers to an Alzheimer's disease research newsletter). We then disseminated the pictures to that audience via an online survey, to determine whether respondents received the messages we intended to convey. Our results demonstrated that, without accompanying explanatory text, pictures are most useful for evoking emotions or making loose connections between major concepts, rather than for communicating specific messages based on Alzheimer's research. In addition, participants more often expressed anger and frustration when the meaning of scientific imagery was unclear than when the meaning of emotional-social imagery was unclear.