Medical Communication: From Theoretical Model To Practical Exploration. Tao Wang
not patients themselves. The difference is that medical communication should be scientific and draws a universal conclusion, not just a person’s own experience and thought. The content of the patient’s communication is related to health, so it is in the category of health communication. But in medical communication, this patient is not a professional medical staff and his experience in controlling blood sugar is not accurate and reliable. There are no scientific basis and argument to assert it will play a corresponding role for other patients. So, it clearly does not belong to medical communication. In the field of medical communication, naturally there will also be the possibility of interpersonal communication; as the saying goes, in the process of communication, there is no one to supervise or be responsible for the review of the content of the dissemination. There are too many levels of interpersonal communication, thus there is likely to be a change in the content of the dissemination. It is not possible to guarantee the accuracy and reliability of the dissemination. For example, at the first level of interpersonal communication, the public is informed that the daily amount of salt should be less than 6 g, and to the second level or the third level, or even more, this number may become 16, or become 60, which is very irresponsible. Therefore, there is a phenomenon of human-to-human communication in the field of medical communication, but the interpersonal communication without regulation and organization is not recommended.
Third, take an example at the organizational level. Imagine that a community organized a health lecture, of which the topic was diabetes prevention and health knowledge. If the main speaker is a medical professional, then he can communicate from the mechanism of diabetes, symptoms, harm, and other aspects with vivid elaboration, thus it belongs to the field of medical communication. And if the presenter is only a patient, a teacher, or any other nonprofessional medical personnel, even if the content is the same, the effect is different, because he has not been professionally trained. Then this dissemination can only belong to the field of health communication or organizational communication, not real medical communication, because nonprofessional communicators cannot master the accuracy and knowledge of the content of the communication.
Finally, let’s talk about the mass level. At present, a wide variety of media, including new media and self-media, concern about medical and health content. The public generally concern more about themselves and the health of their families than the world political situation. If these media in the dissemination of health content do not have the support of medical professionals, it is best only at the field of health communication or mass communication, not the real sense of medical communication. Medical communication can be in various media, including new media, self-media, but must be carried out and promoted by medical professionals. The content of communication also should be controlled and screened by these medical professionals. The lack of control is easy to cause a variety of miscommunicated content. There are some new media that carry out activities for profit in the name of health; this not only is not beneficial to health, but also has the potential to cause harm to the population, which is one of the reasons why we urgently need to establish the concept of medical communication and the field of medical communication.
In addition to the difference in the subject of communication, the second fundamental difference between medical communication and health communication is the content of the communication. As the communicator of medical communication is medical professionals, the content that is written or identified by medical staff will be scientific and objective. This professional advantage ensures the reliability of the source of medical communication, which is unmatched by traditional health communication scholars. At the same time, medicine has different professions and categories. Therefore, what medical communication scholars spread should be their medical expertise with full professional knowledge, not just general medical knowledge. For instance, a cardiovascular doctor should communicate in the field of cardiovascular medicine, not spread their unfamiliar knowledge in obstetrics and gynecology. Pediatricians should disseminate knowledge in pediatrics. The clinical knowledge and norms of adults are partly different from children, so pediatricians are not suitable for the general dissemination of adult medical knowledge. Therefore, the content of medical communication can be summarized as professional knowledge certified by professionals.
Health communication is a branch of communication, whereas medical communication is a branch of medicine.
4.The characteristics of medical communication
Although in the second section, we discussed the evolution of traditional science communication and explained the three paradigms of traditional science, the fact is that the current scientific communication field in China is still not perfect, so the Deficit Model based on the Public Understanding of Science Paradigm is often the easiest to get policy support and practice. An important reason for this phenomenon is that the science communicators are keen on citizen participation, but the public lack interest in those scientific issues. This shows that we cannot simply put the principles of democratic politics into the field of scientific communication. For example, the energy crisis is a good scientific topic, but the public have limited interest in it. For the public, as long as there is enough gasoline to fuel their cars, they are not as much concerned about the amount of oil left in the world, or whether there is a new energy source to be developed, or what benefits new energy sources can bring to us. Because of the lack of direct relationship, the public will not concern a lot or actively involve themselves.
Unlike general scientific topics, medical and health-related topics are associated with natural public engagement attributes because they are relevant to everyone. From birth to death, people will be inseparable from medical and health-related topics. Starting from how to do prenatal checkups to how to screen congenital diseases of the fetus, from how to take maternal care to analyze the benefits of taking natural labor and to distinguish which women need a C-section, these prebirth topics are closely related to every couple. And then, there are topics such as follows: how to observe postnatal conditions, how to urge and feed milk, how to decide to feed breast milk or milk powder, how to feed the babies scientifically, how to screen for neonatal diseases, how to bathe newborns, which vaccines are needed and how and where to get them, how to check the nutritional development indicators of children, and how to prevent some common infectious diseases in children. These above-mentioned topics are closely relevant to the puerperal and the newborn. And then in puberty, topics critical to teenagers range from how to guide boys and girls with targeted sexual development counseling to how to smooth through puberty emotional instability, from how to avoid myopia to how to avoid obesity. In adulthood, topics critical to people at the prime of life can be from how to get regular physical examinations to how to develop healthy and beneficial diet and living habits, and how to save oneself when encountering emergencies. When coming to the old age, knowledge from how to screen for common old-age diseases to how to maintain health, from how to exercise properly to how to cultivate good mood, from how to look at death correctly to how to look at the death of a family member, and so on are closely related to the later life of people.
People’s whole life is inseparable from medical and health topics, while the public are eager to know all kinds of medical information related to themselves and their families. A person may be apathetic to the latest developments in high-energy physics, but he will always pay attention to the physical and mental health problems of himself and his family. Once a person is sick, he will concern about and consult various medical information including national health insurance–related policies and medical-related regulations and use various communication channels to seek medical information. On July 21, 2015, the Chinese Association of Science and Technology and Baidu held a “Kop China and Baidu” strategic cooperation launch event in Beijing. The two sides jointly released the first “China internet users’ popular search behavior report.” The report shows that in the first quarter of 2015, searches on popular topics related to health and health care accounted for 57% of all search needs. It can be inferred that medical communication has received widespread attention. Therefore, in the course of the dissemination of medical and health issues, citizens will be more active to participate through various ways and to engage in active dialogue with the medical community, and ultimately a scientific culture conducive to both sides could be created.
The subject of medical communication is medical staff who shoulders the mission of curing sickness and saving patients,