Effects of Medical Journalism On The General Public
Although medical news articles often deliver public health messages effectively, they often convey wrong or misleading information about health care, partly when reporters do not know or cannot convey the results of clinical studies, and partly when they fail to supply reasonable context. This can result in unrealistic expectations due to coverage of radical medical procedures and experimental technology. Mass media news outlets can also create a “communications storm”to shift attention to a single health issue. The lack of health knowledge in the general public creates a situation where a person can be easily swayed to a certain point of view that is cast in the manner in which information is reported. Consequently, this can create a potentially unhealthy focus on an illness that in actuality is relatively rare.
Medical journalism can also influence an individual's quality of health care. Due to the relative ease at which information can be obtained on the internet, many people will now question doctors on new medications and treatments for their conditions. In more extreme cases, people will compare their symptoms, real or imagined, to various illnesses in attempts to diagnose themselves. There have been a few recent studies that have tried to explore the availability of health information as complement to health care or as a substitute yet no direct relationships have been found. This is most likely caused by a lack of knowledge or a lack of the ability in the individual to apply the health information once found resulting in seeking health care.
Read more about this topic: Medical Journalism
Famous quotes containing the words general public, effects of, effects, medical, journalism, general and/or public:
“The general public is easy. You don’t have to answer to anyone; and as long as you follow the rules of your profession, you needn’t worry about the consequences. But the problem with the powerful and rich is that when they are sick, they really want their doctors to cure them.”
—Molière [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] (1622–1673)
“Virtues are not emotions. Emotions are movements of appetite, virtues dispositions of appetite towards movement. Moreover emotions can be good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable; whereas virtues dispose us only to good. Emotions arise in the appetite and are brought into conformity with reason; virtues are effects of reason achieving themselves in reasonable movements of the appetites. Balanced emotions are virtue’s effect, not its substance.”
—Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274)
“The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic—in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea—known to medical science is work.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“At Hayes’ General Store, west of the cemetery, hangs an old army rifle, used by a discouraged Civil War veteran to end his earthly troubles. The grocer took the rifle as payment ‘on account.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Who will join in the march to the Rocky Mountains with me, a sort of high-pressure-double-cylinder-go-it-ahead-forty-wildcats- tearin’ sort of a feller?... Git out of this warming-pan, ye holly-hocks, and go out to the West where you may be seen.”
—Administration in the State of Miss, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)