Sandy's Scenarios
Scenario: Sandy's Son Has Atopic Dermatitis
Sandy could not sleep last night because her son Joshua cried all night. His skin became worse when they moved in to a new city because of the new weather and allergens. A week ago, she went to the university hospital and one of the doctors gave her a relatively new topical ointment, but it is not helping at all.
She decided to search online to get information for soaps or other creams and ointments. She put keywords 'atopic cream' into Google, but she could see only some commercial cosmetic sites. So she refined her query to 'atopic dermatitis child' and then she clicked the first one 'keepkidshealthy.com'. Before seeing the result, she clicked 'about us' first to check if the site is reliable or not. She realized that it is operated by a doctor, so she decided she could trust the website. After reading through the website for a few minutes she found the writing too difficult to understand so she gave up and decided to call a friend in Korea who she thinks might know what might help Joshua.
Scenario 2: Pregnancy Information
After Joshua finally fell asleep, Sandy logged into Naver Cafe a Korean website that facilitated social networking. She tried to log into Naver at least once a night because she found a lot of valuable information there from the Korean online community, especially since a lot of them were now abroad and could only communicate to each other with this website. She decided to post a message inquiring about treatments for Joshua, and also to see if anyone else lived in the area - hopefully she could ask them for health care provider advice. While navigating around, she found a question about hospitals and insurance in New York. Sandy offered what information she could about the doctors she had seen in the area, in particular she recommended one hospital that she had gone to frequently during her last pregnancy.
The next day Sandy returned to the website to find some information from another mother who had also struggled with her son having Atopic Dermatitis. She recommended a lotion that Sandy's doctor had not yet offered. Sandy immediately wrote it down and thought for sure this would help, she made an appointment for the following Thursday to ask him about the new treatment. She had not yet received information about providers but she thought she would soon, for sure.