Health Journalism and the Patient Safety Movement

UCSF's own Robert Wachter has published another well-written, thought-provoking commentary, this time on the contribution that the media makes in the patient safety effort. Titled "The media: an essential, if sometimes artibrary, promoter of patient safety", it appears in AHRQ's Morbidity & Mortality Rounds on the Web and includes an interview with Charles Ornstein, Pulitzer prize-winning health care journalist.

Especially interesting to me was Ornstein's explanation of how health care reporters get their leads and how good journalists provide balance and perspective (how bad is this compared to other hospitals?) as well as just getting the facts straight on what are often very complex topics.