Something new is happening in the medical profession, virtual doctors. An online physician can diagnose and help advise patients with common ailments such as cold and flu symptoms, urinary tract infections, sinus infections, and allergies. An online doctor consultation sounds like a great idea if you have a communicable illness like the flu. Then a person could contact an online physician and not potentially spread your illness to other patients at the medical office.

Many people are justifiably skeptical about trusting a virtual doctor for online diagnosis and prescriptions. On one hand, time is of the essence for everyone nowadays. When having a consultation with an online doctor, it happens almost immediately and lasts under an hour. Compare that to the urgent care and emergency room visits that can take several hours, and it is a no brainer. Financially it also makes sense to visit a virtual doctor as an online consultation with a virtual doctor is more affordable than emergency rooms and walk in clinics. Also, simple colds and flu viruses can likely be diagnosed with ease and without hands on attention. For example, ear infections represent early 50 percent of of all antibiotic prescriptions written for children in the United States so one could see that an online doctor prescription for an ear infection could be easy for most doctors to write.

But on the other hand, the skepticism is that a virtual doctor might miss the more unusual medical issues that could arise, and could potentially misdiagnose a big problem as a simple cold or flu. A virtual doctor cannot feel glands and a virtual doctor cannot listen to chests. Perhaps the rise of virtual doctors is a good thing but like many new things, it will just take awhile for people to get used to it. To learn more, read this: www.memd.me