Misinformation and Medicine

Misinformation and distrust are affecting our ability to provide the best care for patients. Nurses General Nursing Article

Published

Misinformation and Medicine

I have a patient I am confident has bladder cancer. They first came to me when their urine turned dark red, and they could not urinate without self-catheterizing. I have explained my concerns to this patient multiple times. Unfortunately, their response is staunch disbelief that cancer could possibly cause their symptoms. Instead, the patient remains convinced their symptoms are a side effect of the single dose of the COVID-19 vaccine they received two years ago. The basis for this belief is information regarding the harmful effects of the COVID-19 vaccine the patient read on the internet, saw on television, or heard from peers. None of this information comes from a medical professional. Any evidence I present contrary to the knowledge the patient gained from these sources is immediately dismissed as if I am too ignorant to understand the medicine I practice. This is just one example of the alarming effect of social media and misinformation disseminated by traditional media on patient care.

Daily, patients say to me, “I’m not a doctor, but I did some research online.” Countless patients have come to me asking for prescriptions for ivermectin and are angry when I do not provide what they want. I never discouraged patients from using the internet as a tool. However, I do encourage the use of reputable websites and guide them to sites with accurate information, as this can help guide informed discussions regarding their care.

Patients turning to the internet for medical advice is not new, and neither is “fake news.” Since the inception of the first medical websites in the 1990s, people search the internet for answers to their health concerns. The internet, as a source of all information, is constantly growing relatively untethered. This includes information with a questionable basis in fact. Ideas once considered fictional, outlandish, or conspiracy theories found in supermarket tabloids are now accepted as mainstream. Healthcare is not immune to conspiracy theories treated as factual information, which has led to growing mistrust of healthcare professionals.

Widespread mistrust of healthcare can be traced to the beginning of medicine and seen with the long-term trend of vaccine hesitancy, which goes as far back as the inception of the smallpox vaccine. Unfortunately, with the pandemic, the effects of misinformation found online and presented by the media have widened the distrust patients have regarding medical care overall. This makes providing the highest quality of care to patients difficult across all aspects of medicine and puts the lives of patients at risk when they doubt or refuse to accept evidence-based health care.

When the pandemic started, the idea of “fake news” was already ingrained into much of the population. The pandemic provided the perfect storm for distrust and misinformation to take hold, spreading like wildfire. The efforts to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus led to major changes to everyday life, affecting the entire world. As the impacts of the changes challenged “normal” life and led many people to struggle, mistrust of health professionals moved to an all-time high. Videos were posted online by people at hospitals trying to dispel the fact of the locations being overwhelmed. Dangerous treatments like the ingestion of bleach became touted as cures. Rumors spread that health professionals received payments for every patient they could get a positive COVID-19 test on. Misinformation continues to be so rampant that reputable medical sources like the World Health Organization, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mayo Clinic, and Johns Hopkins continue to post and update information regarding the myths surrounding COVID-19. Unfortunately, with the increasing distrust of what is traditionally regarded as acceptable sources of healthcare knowledge, patients are no longer willing to consider these sources as reliable and continue to turn to internet videos and online advice from questionable sources. Pew Research indicates trust in medical professionals dropped from 89% in April 2020 to 78% in December 2021.

As healthcare providers, the frustration we experience when patients come to us with questionable science and doubt what we know to be sound becomes burdensome. The problem lies in how to turn this around to keep patients from causing more harm to themselves. Research published in Health Psychology revealed people with lower education levels, interest in alternative medicine, and existing distrust of healthcare are more likely to believe medical misinformation such as ineffective cancer treatments and false information regarding vaccine safety. The researchers found participants who accepted one source of inaccurate information were more likely to believe additional sources of misinformation.

There is no easy answer to the pervasive misinformation and “fake news.” Nurses remain the most trusted profession, and we need to use this to our advantage. Continue to educate with factual information. Provide compassionate patient care in ways that continually build and grow that trust. As always, we will not be able to save everyone. But the ones we save will be worth the effort.

References/Resources

Americans’ Trust in Scientists, Other Groups Declines

Education level, interest in alternative medicine among factors associated with believing misinformation

5 Votes
FNP2writer

About FNP2writer, ASN, BSN, MSN, NP

Family Nurse Practitioner with almost 20 years of experience in the nursing field. I have a passion for women's health care and enjoy educating patients. Freelance healthcare writing allows me to share my knowledge with an even wider audience.

5 Articles   9 Posts

Share this post

Share on other sites

At the beginning of Covid, fear was rampant.  Inaccuracies and flat out lies were distributed by Dr. Fauci and the CDC (such as masking not being necessary for non-health care workers). Then the vaccine came along and it was being withheld from most Americans. Then evidence came out that the vaccines were not as effective as advertised.  Then it became pretty obvious that vaccines did not actually prevent transmission, as advertised. The divisiveness was at an unimaginable level. Accusations flew. People lost their jobs. Businesses were shut down and they went bankrupt. Physicians were censored and essentially cancelled.  Patients died alone. We reap what we sew. The damage will take years to repair. 
 

2 Votes

I read this article in it’s entirety even though it was very painful to read …I am so sick of the word misinformation, about as sick as I am of doctors and their god complex.  Like that one doctor that had a god complex and prescribed a patient with active cdiff senna AND mirilax twice a day and every single nurse that had that patient administered it until I got the order dced after a week.   Do you think that doctor was happy I caught that errror?  No he wasn’t.  Did any of the other nurses that gave the laxatives to the poor man already pooping 10 times a day laugh at the stupidity of it when I told them what had happened.  No they felt shame and were either angry or embarrassed. Yea 

  Remember gallilio risking death trying to say the sun didn’t rotate around the earth?  Well scientist are soon going to have to risk death to get the truth out if society continues on this dangerous path of demonizing people that don’t agree with the status quo. 
 

Science has already been incredibly corrupted as things being studied are no longer studied to benefit mankind, but subjects are now only being studied because the government and other special interest want the particular thing to be studied.  You can’t do a study with out funding and it turns out that funding isn’t coming from the goodness of peoples hearts.  Funding is being produced to push a wanted narrative.  People for as long as I lived believed things about their health that wasn’t true, however, this is the first time in my life that society has tried to turn these people into villains and criminals.  Something I never though I’d see and that is truly horrifying.  

3 Votes
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
On 11/19/2022 at 9:26 PM, Rate your pain said:

At the beginning of Covid, fear was rampant.  Inaccuracies and flat out lies were distributed by Dr. Fauci and the CDC (such as masking not being necessary for non-health care workers). Then the vaccine came along and it was being withheld from most Americans. Then evidence came out that the vaccines were not as effective as advertised.  Then it became pretty obvious that vaccines did not actually prevent transmission, as advertised. The divisiveness was at an unimaginable level. Accusations flew. People lost their jobs. Businesses were shut down and they went bankrupt. Physicians were censored and essentially cancelled.  Patients died alone. We reap what we sew. The damage will take years to repair. 
 

Nonsense.

Fauci wasn't the problem... that's right wing rhetoric... and suggests that you don't know much about the pandemic response of the 45th president and his cabinet. The failure of leadership in the executive branch was noted early on in an editorial from NEJM. Their studied opinion was brutal:

Quote

The response of our nation’s leaders has been consistently inadequate. The federal government has largely abandoned disease control to the states. Governors have varied in their responses, not so much by party as by competence. But whatever their competence, governors do not have the tools that Washington controls. Instead of using those tools, the federal government has undermined them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was the world’s leading disease response organization, has been eviscerated and has suffered dramatic testing and policy failures. The National Institutes of Health have played a key role in vaccine development but have been excluded from much crucial government decision making. And the Food and Drug Administration has been shamefully politicized,3 appearing to respond to pressure from the administration rather than scientific evidence. Our current leaders have undercut trust in science and in government,4 causing damage that will certainly outlast them. Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed “opinion leaders” and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.

Right wing political rhetoric certainly wants to scape goat Fauci for the failures of the political leadership...most of us can identify that stuff with little difficulty.  

4 Votes

I’m not presenting it as right wing or left wing. I explained how I believe the public saw it. Perception is very important and the medical community, I believe, harmed itself. Yes, Fauci  lied. He was the spokesperson and representative. He admitted he deliberately misled the public about masks, for instance. The optics were so bad. The damage was enormous. That’s not political.  

0 Votes
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
5 minutes ago, Rate your pain said:

I’m not presenting it as right wing or left wing. I explained how I believe the public saw it. Perception is very important and the medical community, I believe, harmed itself. Yes, Fauci  lied. He was the spokesperson and representative. He admitted he deliberately misled the public about masks, for instance. The optics were so bad. The damage was enormous. That’s not political.  

Wrong.

The politicians lied about covid and politicized the response. That's what the evidence shows... unless you "do your own research" to find things on the internet to tickle your ears and feed your bias. 

I wonder why you are pointing to a "lie" about masks while ignoring daily lies and incompetence rom the executive branch as covid unfolded... massive your political beliefs get in the way of an honest appraisal of what happened. You should read the article.  

2 Votes
Specializes in orthopedic/trauma, Informatics, diabetes.
1 hour ago, Rate your pain said:

Yes, Fauci  lied.

NO he did not and people like you, especially in health care are part of the problem. smdh 

He tried, a severe uphill battle, to get the truth out and as another posted stated, the R rhetoric was downplaying and THEY were the ones lying about what was really going on. There are tapes of 45 admitting he knew how bad it was. He played Russian Roulette with people's lives and WE are ones reaping what they sowed: terribly understaffed in every single facet of healthcare. I am appalled at the viewpoints of too many here. 

5 Votes
Specializes in Travel Nurse.

As a Covid vaccination nurse, this topic is extremely controversial!

0 Votes
Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
Uzma Ruiz said:

As a Covid vaccination nurse, this topic is extremely controversial!

Because of misinformation.  

0 Votes
+ Add a Comment