A-Googling they will go

Doctors Googling medical answers

Googling for a diagnosis--use of Google as a diagnostic aid: internet based study

Google searches out diagnoses, stat

Comparison of MEDLINE, Google Scholar, and Scirus (PDF)

Concerns about Google Scholar

In a fairly small study (26 published diagnoses blinded for searches to try to find using search terms), they found them on Google 58% of the time (15 out of the 26). How they can make claims that the internet can be particularly useful is beyond me, as the confidence interval stretched from 38% to 77%. But you know what it really tells us? Librarians need to make it clear that we (and the resources at our disposal) can give you much better odds than, as one colleague put it, a crap shoot. We have much better searching skills, because of training and experience, have access to more databases, and simply put, we do this for a living. Leave patching people up and making the actual diagnoses to the medical professionals, but librarians are very useful for finding the information necessary for medical personnel to do their jobs, and they can save valuable time doing it. Unfortunately, there is a perception that 'everything is out on the Internet' (wrong) and that as long as you find something, it's what you need (wrong). Librarians are trained to evaluate information as well as find it and are adept at determining the value of the website, its agenda, and how much weight the information should have.

So if there are any doctors reading this, feel free to Google, of course, but you might find a quick call to a librarian can save you time, give you better results, and could quite possibly help you save your patient.