LEARN9: Establishing Crisis Standards

I chose to highlight CDC Chief of Media Relations, Glen Nowak's input on Outbreak Communication

Challenge five: Experts and the public have different views.

The public and our medical experts have different ways of viewing the world and that can be a communications challenge. When we spoke about the use of antivirals as a “treatment,” the public developed a mental model in which people who took antivirals stopped the progression of the disease and, therefore, were not going to develop really severe complications. The physicians’ mental model was different. They saw antivirals as an effective way to treat some of the symptoms, but they were not a cure. So there was a lot of confusion as the physicians were trying to say, “Look, it’s not a cure,” and people in the audience were saying, “But you said it’s a treatment. Treatments are cures.” Sometimes we don’t recognize these differences and, as a result, they can cause problems for us in communications.

Being a health professional myself, I know the utmost importance of correct and accurate information...and that is understood by the public. In times of crises, misinterpretations can lead to added social unrest and eventually death.

Establishing crisis standards would help us prepare for it. Educating the public on various common medical jargons can be one way. Another is providing quote en quote information instead of paraphrasing experts would be one way of preventing misinterpretations. Experts on the other hand must be careful with their choice of words as it can be easily misunderstood by the ma****.