Google versus Doctor? Communication and digital mediations, medical trust and therapeutic adherence in chronic primary care patients in Chile
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1590/SciELOPreprints.16378Keywords:
Medication Adherence, Health Communication, Digital Mediations,Abstract
This article presents the qualitative results of the WIP Chile 5.0 project: Google versus Doctor?, which investigates how the internet, Google, and other media influence the prevention and self-management of non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs) among primary care patients in Chile, comparing their impact with information provided by physicians and health personnel. Based on four focus groups conducted in Santiago and La Unión (Los Ríos Region), the study identifies that therapeutic adherence is neither an individual nor a purely medical phenomenon, but rather the result of a complex meaning-making process mediated by communicational, cultural, relational, and structural factors. Results reveal that interpersonal trust in the physician is the most powerful subjective predictor of adherence; that Google operates as a parallel information source whose credibility grows in inverse proportion to trust in the doctor; and that 'silent abandonment'—undeclared treatment interruption due to systemic exhaustion—is the most frequent and invisible form of non-adherence. The study concludes that improving adherence requires a communicational design that validates patient culture and redesigns the health system's architecture, not merely the clinician's interpersonal skills.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Miguel Angel Carrasco, Sergio Godoy, Rodrigo Browne, Bárbara Klett, Gabriel Bastidas

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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