User:User9669/Kainaw's criterion

To determine if a question on the reference desk is a request for medical advice, Kainaw's criterion is:

“ Can the question be answered completely without providing a diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment advice? ”

The answer to the criterion must be either "yes" or "no" and is the opposite of the answer to the question, "Is this a request for medical advice?"

Use

The following are examples of the use of Kainaw's criterion (loosely based on real questions on the reference desk):

I was on the subway and my throat got tight and I had trouble breathing. I didn't smell anything unusual. What caused it? Was it a biological attack?

Can the question be answered completely without providing a diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment advice? No.

To completely answer this question, a person must diagnose why the questioner's throat began to tighten, possibly the reason for trouble breathing. Therefore, it is a request for medical advice.

Can diazoxide help control my blood pressure?

Can the question be answered completely without providing a diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment advice? No.

To completely answer this question, a person must make a prognosis on the future condition of the questioner's blood pressure. Therefore, it is a request for medical advice.

I normally take two excedrin to stop my migraines, but I was told they aren't good for my liver. What else can I use?

Can the question be answered completely without providing a diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment advice? No.

A complete answer to this question requires suggesting treatment for the questioner's supposed migranes. Therefore, it is a request for medical advice.

My doctor told me that I have a beta strep infection. What is that?

Can the question be answered completely without providing a diagnosis, prognosis, or treatment advice? Yes.

It is not necessary to diagnose the questioner as actually having the infection (or any other infection). It is not necessary to discuss the future condition of the questioner's infection. It is not necessary to suggest treatment for the questioner's infection. It is not a request for medical advice.

Borderline cases

Of course, there are cases that are borderline and will still lead to arguments. For these, it is important to notice that the question asked may not be the question implied. Therefore, great care must be taken to only answer the question asked and not the question implied.

I sometimes get white painful bumps on my tongue. Is that a side-effect of tooth whitening toothpaste?

It is apparent that the questioner is asking if his or her white bumps are caused by the toothpaste, but that is not the literal question. The literal question is asking if the toothpaste has been known to have a side-effect of causing white bumps. This may be answered as long as care is taken not to diagnose what the questioner's white bumps are.

If I eat tons of fast food at least three times a day and do as little exercise as possible, will I get fat?

Because obesity is a medical condition, providing a complete answer to this question requires a prognosis about the questioner's future level of obesity. It is, technically, a request for medical advice.

I have diabetes. Are there any brands of ice cream safe for diabetics?

While the questioner is clearly asking if there are any brands of ice cream safe for him or her, the question actually asks about diabetics in general. It is possible to answer the actual question completely, but not the implied question. This is a case where answers should be considered carefully such that they do not cross the line of offering medical advice to this particular questioner.

Legal questions

Does Kainaw's criterion apply similarly to legal questions? Not particularly. It is not necessary to make a diagnosis or prognosis for legal situations. In order to apply Kainaw's criterion to legal questions, the community must first identify what it means to give legal advice. For medical advice, the criteria are diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. When the legal advice criteria are identified, the criterion will be similar. Just replace the medical advice criteria with the legal advice criteria and a criterion for legal advice will be evident.

History

Before Kainaw began answering questions on the Reference Desk in 2005, there had been a policy on the reference desk that requests for medical advice must not be answered. To avoid having people answer the questions, a policy of removing the questions began. This led to endless debates about which questions were requesting medical advice and which were simply requesting medical information.

Kainaw found the endless arguments wasteful because they tended to be isolated on the reference desk talk page, which is moved into a historical index and rarely examined for future reference. Therefore, the debates begin anew with each removal of a medical question and end with the same open-ended result. Some people feel that a question is a request for medical advice. Some do not. Some don't care. Some just want to argue. Some got lost and ended up in the argument by mistake and have no idea how to get out.

Kainaw attempted to get the argument moved to the medical advice guidelines page. Very few people were interested in moving to the outskirts of the reference desk. No fruitful discussion took place. Kainaw spent the time coming up with questions that were borderline and attempting to get others to express why they were or were not requests for medical advice.

In 2007, Kainaw realized that it wasn't against the guidelines to ask a medical question. It was against policy to answer a request for medical advice. So, how does a person answer a request for medical advice? It is done by providing some sort of diagnosis and/or treatment advice. If the question could be answered without diagnosis and/or treatment advice, then it isn't against policy to answer the question. The catch is that it is possible to answer an explicit request for medical advice by only answering a small part of the question without providing any advice. For that reason, Kainaw included the important word completely.

After many months of repeating this simple question in the many debates about medical advice, other users recognized the question as a simple method to identify a question as a request for medical advice. In 2008, TenOfAllTrades included prognosis. Zain Ebrahim coined the phrase "Kainaw's criterion."

In 2009, some members of the Reference Desk began using Kainaw's criterion as a justification for not answering requests for medical advice. The criterion was expanded by users further to include requests for legal advice.

See also

• Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice