Health Care Assistant (HCA) - Kelowna - 2024

Adapted from The CRAAP Test, developed by librarians at California State University, Chico

Since the advent of the public internet in the 1990s, using Internet technologies to generate and share health information has become common place. However, you have to be very cautious when using or recommending information that you have found on the public Internet and social media. 

In addition, your patients maybe unduly influenced by information they find, or have recommended to them by others. Recent peer-reviewed studies have begun reporting in their findings a high degree of misinformation associated with such information.

The article The prevalence and characteristics of misinformation on "TikTok" related to cirrhosis and liver disease: A comparative analysis of accurate and misleading content. publish in the April 2024 issue of the Journal of Investigative Medicine found that 39.7% TikTok videos analyzed in there study were identified as misinformation.  

Always be very cautious when using such information. Take the time to verify it in the peer--reviewed health science literature or academically acceptable sources. If after that you still remain unsure of its quality, reach out to your instructor or subject librarian for assistance in evaluating it, prior to its use. 

Generative AI applications have been know to provide biased and made up information referred to in the industry as hallucinations. Learn more about this situation in the link below.

APA Citation Style now requires correct citation of information generated via test generating and image generating AI applications.  See Artificial Intelligence: ChatGPT, etc. in the OC Library APA Citation LibGuide.  

You can use Google Scholar to search for and access articles at the OC Library and obtain citation counts for many articles and books in your google Scholar Search Result. Citation counts can be useful in evaluating the worth of a scholarly article.