health care reporting Archives

The Latest From a Persistent Campaign to Increase the Accuracy and Usefulness of Health News Reporting

Here at AJN we’ve always been inspired by the work of Gary Schwitzer, whose Web site Health News Review has grown increasingly influential in its role as a watchdog of the accuracy of health news reporting. Schwitzer has recently been blogging from the “Selling Sickness” conference in Amsterdam. Below is a short video interview he shot with the Australian physician Dr. Peter Mansfield, who runs an organization called Healthy Skepticism—and who compares “industry-occupied medicine” to a communist state in its power to control information and drown out dissenting voices. Whether you’re a journalist, a provider, or a potential patient, Schwitzer’s ongoing analysis of health care news provides a model for understanding and filtering the flood of information we get about medications, testing, and various conditions.—JM, senior editor/blog editor

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ_ER2xSzG0]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:15:17-05:00October 12th, 2010|healthcare social media, Nursing|0 Comments

Reading this Blog Post May Lead to Blinking

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor

“VA Hospital May Have Infected 1,800 Veterans With HIV”

I came across this headline when I was looking for the latest news on the Internet. It certainly got my attention. I immediately thought to myself, “Wow, haven’t these soldiers been through enough, and now they might have HIV.” I took the bait and did what the editors of the article hoped I’d do—I clicked on the headline. Sure enough, it was not exactly accurate. Yes, there was a risk that these patients had been exposed to bloodborne pathogens due to the improper cleaning technique performed on dental instruments at a VA hospital, but there was no specific reason to think they actually had that illness. It reminds me of a cautionary tale by Peter Jacobi I came across a number of years ago that demonstrates how statistics can be manipulated by writers: “100% of those who were born in 1850 and ate carrots are now dead. So carrots obviously lead to . . . death.”

While there are worse ones out there, this is an example of how headlines are manipulated to get readers’ attention. Don’t get me wrong: proper cleaning of instruments is an integral part of patient safety and all patients should be able to trust the facility providing them treatment. But wouldn’t it be more responsible to say, “VA hospital may have exposed 1,800 veterans to infection,” since we don’t […]