big problem for health care
University of Chicago Offers Class to Confront Misinformation
Chicago (TNS) – Patients have long been told to consult their doctors for accurate and reliable health information.
But in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors’ voices have sometimes been drowned out by social media users blasting misinformation around the world, leaving patients questionable and sometimes dangerous about their health. You are made to make a choice.
Now, Chicago’s medical school offers a new class aimed at getting doctors and other medical professionals to listen. It is a course on how to combat medical misinformation. The University of Chicago Pritzker College of Medicine began offering classes for medical students last year, and recently developed an abridged version for nurses, pharmacy residents, and senior medical students studying for their doctoral degrees. did.
“We are essentially trying to make it a fair fight,” says Sara Serritella, one of the instructors and director of communications at the UC Institute of Translational Medicine. “Like we saw during the pandemic, this whole crisis of having to communicate science in a way that builds trust could literally be the difference between life and death.”
This class is the first of its kind at a medical school in the United States. Dr. Vineet Arora, who teaches a class with Serritella, says medical misinformation extends far beyond his COVID-19.
“When we think about the future, and when we think about the recurrence of something like polio, we make sure that we are teaching tomorrow’s medical professionals how to tackle the problem in a way that will reach the public where they are. He is the Dean of Medical Education at the School of Medicine and co-founder of the Illinois Health Professionals Action Collaborative Team (IMPACT), an advocacy group for health professionals.
Former reporter Serritella recently taught her how to grab the audience’s attention in a Zoom class. Lectures sometimes resembled what is taught in an introductory journalism class. Arora and Serritella teach students to hone their communication skills to dispel health myths.
In her wide-eyed, energetic voice, Serritella told her students to connect emotionally with their audience, tell stories rather than just rattle facts, and lead from the most interesting parts. She told them to omit jargon and be “surgically precise” when choosing words.
The students spent the second half of the class in small groups brainstorming which myths they should address in their respective projects. Dr. Eve Bloomgarden, an endocrinologist at North Shore University Health Systems and co-founder of IMPACT, also attended the class and helped refine the students’ ideas. By the end of the course, students are expected to create infographics and share them with patients and online to dispel healthcare myths.
When the course was first offered last year, many students chose to tackle myths related to COVID-19.
One infographic from a past class has a picture of a bird perching on a tree asking, “If I already have COVID-19, should I be vaccinated against COVID?” In the next frame, another bird explains in a simple one- or two-sentence speech bubble why people who are already infected need to be vaccinated.
Another student from a rural area created an infographic on ivermectin. Ivermectin is a drug that some believe can be used to treat COVID-19, but it has not been shown to be safe or effective for that purpose. Serritella said she decided to focus on ivermectin after hearing about people in her community using it.
Another student accepted the myth that people should cut sugar from their diet. ?” the student asked in the infographic.
One infographic focused on signing up to become an organ donor. “Being an organ donor doesn’t affect your own care if you’re sick,” it said.
Sophomore medical student Maeson Zietowski created an infographic that dispels myths about gender-affirming hormone treatments.
In his infographic, he writes that the use of puberty blockers (drugs that can be used to temporarily suppress puberty in transgender and gender nonconforming children) can be used to “encourage families to find out the child’s gender and cause distress to the child.” “It can give you time to gather information without giving you a lot of money.” Onset by puberty. He wrote, “When stopped, puberty resumes normally as the sex assigned at birth.”
Zietowski says he learned in the class that there are many resources available to help medical professionals speak up in an engaging way. Many of our students used the free program Canva to create their infographics.
“People think they don’t have the skills to design, or they don’t have confidence in what they put out, or they think their voice shouldn’t be the voice saying this, so I think they’re counting,” said Zietowski.
Naomi Tesema, a third-year medical student who has worked on infographics and worked in classes on the COVID-19 vaccine, will help future doctors understand how to communicate with patients and communities, especially those who may be left behind. said that it was important.
Tesema, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia, said some patients may not trust the medical system.Like the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, a sick black man spent years undergoing treatment. did not receive
She used the skills she learned while creating infographics to talk to family, friends, and patients at the free clinic she worked at.
“We have to be able to communicate with people and establish a way for them to trust us,” Tesema said.
Dr. Andrea Anderson, senior medical education consultant for the Association of American Medical Colleges, hopes more medical schools will offer similar classes in the future. On offer, we offer classes to pharmacists and nurses as part of a grant received from the association.
Anderson said it was one of five medical schools to receive grants to address medical misinformation, while others use actors to help students practice their communication skills. and developing online training videos.
“I think medical misinformation is one of the biggest problems facing healthcare today,” says Anderson. “It is our job as medical educators to ensure that these trainees are fully equipped with the necessary skills to communicate with patients during this extremely challenging time.”
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