A Reporter Who Cares, Too
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Well, after Akanksha revisited the subject, "partly inward reply to your weblog together with partly merely to phonation unopen to of my perceptions together with frustrations amongst the manufacture from the advantage dot of a healthcare reporter." She offered a number of personal reflections on the Becker's blog. Excerpts:
As a healthcare reporter, I continuously enquiry the industry, speak amongst healthcare professionals weekly together with write nearly the issues daily, all of which objectively informs my perception.
And the perception I bring of the healthcare manufacture is 1 wrought amongst contradiction. Hospital executives, physicians together with staff claim their No. 1 priority is the patient. It's upheld every bit the universal truth. But inward this industry, utter seems oh-so-cheap because 440,000 deaths from preventable errors don't relay the message of "safety every bit a priority." If hospitals together with wellness systems genuinely concord patient security every bit a original concern, at that spot is no excuse for such a figure.
And thence she asks the telephone commutation question:
When volition leaders really brand purposeful moves toward addressing these issues together with tangibly demonstrate their commitment to the patient?
Time is going quickly, together with these security concerns aren't budging.
And thence she concludes:
So where does that exit us?
One of the original pillars of journalism is objectivity inward reporting. Journalists are non to involve themselves amongst the stories they write. I apologize at in 1 trial to the professor of my ethics together with communication class, because inward this case, I would live on remiss to non teach involved.
I don't desire to include paw hygiene on hereafter lists of patient security issues. I don't desire to include medication errors. I don't desire to proceed writing nearly HAIs.
It's a novel year, thence let's prepare a novel focus on the most basic tenet of healthcare: caring for the patient. Re-visit my listing of the top 10 patient security issues for 2015 together with force those to the top of your resolutions.
And this year, I promise to write a dissimilar storey — 1 void of discouraging repetitiveness. We owe that progress to the patients.
Brava to Akanksha. There is a lesson hither for all wellness attention journalists: Maintain your objective reporting standards inward each story, but live on certain that the stories you lot take away to encompass are non restatements of manufacture pablum or self-serving press releases. Find the drama inward the fact that people are unnecessarily existence harmed together with killed. Document together with let on those cases. Probe together with explicate to the populace together with the profession what has together with has non been done to improve the situation.
Also, when novel (often expensive) medical devices together with therapies are introduced, inquire the question: Do these really brand attention ameliorate for people? On the AHCJ listserv recently, Norman Bauman noted:
A study inward this week's BMJ works life that when word stories exaggerated the results of wellness research, the original press unloose was unremarkably exaggerated. About a 3rd of the press releases had exaggerations.
They scored the original papers, press releases, together with word stories on (1) Advice to readers to alter behaviour, (2) causal statements drawn from correlational research, together with (3) inference to humans from animate existence enquiry that went beyond those inward the papers.
40% (CI 33% to 46%) of the press releases contained exaggerated advice
33% (26% to 40%) contained exaggerated causal claims
36% (28% to 46%) contained exaggerated inference to humans from animate existence research.
When press releases contained such exaggeration, 58% (CI 48% to 68%), 81% (70% to 93%), together with 86% (77% to 95%) of word stories, respectively, contained like exaggeration.
They said the responsibleness inward such cases rested non amongst the journalist, or the PR office, but amongst the researchers who permit the press unloose become out amongst those claims. . . . So the activity points are to read the original paper, or at to the lowest degree the abstract together with discussion, non merely the press release.