Table 4.

Health care practitioners’ and health librarians’ experience with online consumer health information (OCHI).

Theme and subtheme			Example quote
1. General opinion of participants on OCHI			“And for patients, ‘I saw this online’ is the new ‘my friend told me,’ which I still see a lot with the elderly, although even the elderly are going online.” [Pharmacist #2]
2. Types of OCHI
	2.1 General health information	“I once saw a patient who had a dry cough and nothing else and came into an appointment because her friend had posted on Facebook that she had pneumonia.” [Doctor #3]
	2.2 Forums and patient-sourced information	“There are a ton of forums online people talking about their personal experiences...you don’t get that from your health professional, they don’t know what it’s like to live with a condition. So, it can be very helpful to see other people’s experiences and it may give your ideas for alternative treatments.” [Librarian #1]
	2.3 Alternative medicine information	“I had a patient who was relatively healthy but had high blood pressure that he treated with valerian root he had read about online...and so I looked it up and there was no real evidence for its effect on blood pressure.” [Nurse #1]
	2.4 Antivaccination information	“It’s extremely frustrating because a lot of this antivaccine stuff is focused on really small risks and you have to acknowledge there might be risks and people tend to fixate on them, like there is mercury in vaccines, yes but there’s mercury in food. So, it can be extremely time consuming to combat that. I think that topic is the biggest and most harmful.” [Pharmacist #2]
3. Factors influencing outcomes
	3.1 Individual characteristics	“Definitely low health literacy but there also really well-educated people who don’t have a health background and can be quite susceptible to the alternative medicine stuff. In another clinic where I work we see a lot of new immigrants, a lot of them Arabic speaking, I can’t work with them as much.” [Pharmacist #2]
	3.2 Information avoidant personalities	“I think if you know your patient and kind of know they’re the type who would basically somaticize every side effect you’re not going to go over them in as much detail, you will sort of down play them.” [Nurse #1]
	3.3 Access to health care services	“Just that in Montreal, I don’t know exact numbers, but around 30-40% of people don’t have a family doctor, and the more vulnerable you are the more your access to good medical care decreases so I think that yes there are flaws to internet usage to access health care, but in a system where person-to-person health care is not good or easy to access, it may be the only resource that many people have available to them.” [Doctor #2]