Medicine in the Media

“Media” is a broad word that refers to the substance through which matter moves—in the case of medicine, the various technological forms of communication through which information moves. The advancement of communication technology, ranging from TV to the Internet, has led to advancement in medical culture, both in terms of healthcare management and treatment and the exposing of doctors’ personal lives.

The recent focus on doctors’ personal lives reveals a public fascination with doctors rooted in a cultural ideal of the stoic caregiver. For so long, doctors have been regarded—and have protected their image as—omnipotent healers whose personal motives are not relevant to patient care. Now, under the influence of standpoint history and increasing concern for emotional exploration and health, memoirs, often deeply personal and philosophical, of the medical training experience or medical practice are commonplace in bookstores. News sources have jumped on this trend as well. For example, Pauline Chen is a regular columnist for the New York Times, and Atul Gawande is a staff member of the New Yorker. Doctor dramas, such as ER or Gray’s Anatomy, show that doctors are human, too (what a surprise!). However, since doctors are the main characters in these shows, they still gain a hero-worthy status (one has only to look to House, MD), often at the expense of other people in the healthcare system. One study in the readings showed that patient characters, when they did show up, were usually overly anxious, demanding, or unconscious/dead. Given that the patient is one half of the doctor-patient relationship, it would be better to portray patients in a more sympathetic, or at least realistic, light. However, this might detract from the drama and hero-making of doctors that producers seek to create. The portrayal of patients also hints at the intended viewership of these shows. The creators understand that these shows are most popular among aspiring medical students or people with some knowledge of the healthcare system, who may not be most interested in the mundane aspects of healthcare, realistic portrayals of human interaction.

While I think that doctor dramas can be a good venue for explaining doctors’ thought processes and discussing controversial issues in medicine, in the real world, medical journalism does not seem to be living up to its full potential. Doctors are wary of journalists, who can “make” a career by reporting medical success, or break a career by reporting medical error. While it is understandable that doctor dramas would not take on policy or economic issues in healthcare, the failure of journalists to generally do so is not. One of our readings shows how Dr. Kevorkian gained publicity for his pro-euthanasia acts, but instead of broadening the story to bioethical concerns, the news media spun it as a crime-and-personality story. There is a place for entertainment and catching the audience’s attention, but journalism is supposed to report on broad-reaching societal issues. The news media can enliven the discussion about important issues such as end-of-life care and consequences of lack of insurance in a way that human dramas cannot. Doctors need to be involved in the accurate portrayal of facts in the media and be vigilant about making sure that journalists are not sensationalizing the story.