| Sumario: | Objective: The advancement of internet and technologies have opened up revenues for a number of businesses including healthcare. Websites like WebMD, Google health etc. offer symptoms and differential diagnosis to patients. In this era of modern technology, people believe everything they read on the internet and consider themselves more informed than specialists. These patients look up their symptom online, the cause of their symptoms and even probable diagnosis and management. Our study aims to explore the problems faced by health professionals while dealing internet health-seeking behavior of patients. Methods: Eight General physicians and six Surgeons from different regions of Sialkot, Pakistan were selected via purposive sampling technique. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews over the phone with prior appointments. Manual qualitative thematic analysis was performed by transcribing the interviews and then codes, subthemes, and themes were generated. Results: Five themes and fourteen subthemes were identified depicting the problems faced by Health care practitioners, namely: Threat to patient safety (self-diagnosis, self-medication, non-compliant to medicines, understanding issues regarding complications), difficult to counsel (opinionated patients, irrelevant information about procedures), Frustration (making own conclusions, lack of understanding), Professional disregard (as patients challenge physician authority, reluctant about diagnostic procedures, defamation, taking 2nd opinion online) doctor-patient relationship changes (information overload regarding history, lack of trust). Conclusion: The drastic increase of patients' access to internet health information has caused unpredictable impacts on the doctor-patient relationship. Future recommendations have been suggested to overcome the challenges faced by health professionals due to the online searching behavior of patients and hence improving the health outcomes.
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