Occupational therapists educate patients and clients to equip them to become active participants in their own care and to provide them with specific knowledge, skills and training. To make informed decisions about their health and wellbeing, patients need high quality information. The World Wide Web is growing as a source of health information. For this information source to be effective, its content must be accurate and the way it is written must be appropriate to facilitate patients' understanding.
The aim of this paper is to raise awareness of the World Wide Web as a resource for occupational therapists when educating patients. It reviews the literature regarding the benefits and potential pitfalls of using the World Wide Web for patient education and outlines some guidelines that will help occupational therapists, students and support workers to provide patients with or direct them to sources of reliable web-based health information.
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