Translating complicated jargon and medicalese for patients and a lay audience is not a skill I've have developed all that much. In fact, something as simple as reporting on the peer-review process used by journals has been a real challenge for me.
During a session at the annual meeting of the Association of Health Care Journalists on Friday in Chicago (where later in the day I enjoyed pizza at Due's--hence the photograph), John Fauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel described Side Effects, an occasional series he's been writing on the intersection of "money, medicine, and patients."
The topics Fauber has tackled really blew me away. "UW linked to ghostwriting," "Physicians' disclosures to UW, journals inconsistent," "Journal editor gets royalties as articles favor devices"--those are just three titles on a long list of articles published over the past year or so. Those are also meaty subjects, ones that cut close to home for me (as a journal editor) and that I would have trouble explaining in plain English.
As Fauber talked, the editor of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Catherine DeAngelis, MD, sat two chairs away. She could only shake her head and look down at her notes as the misbehaviors and ethical problems of fellow medical editors were described.
I'm looking forward to the end of the semester when I have time to read Fauber's articles word for word. Leading readers in such important but complicated issues--and engaging them with an effective narrative--is a real talent and a great service to society. I'd like to get better at it, and Fauber has much to teach me.
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