Volume 196 - Issue 10
Not window dressing, but key to making medical research matter
Author: Rachel E Nowak
Med J Aust 2012; 196 (10): 618. || doi: 10.5694/mja12.10692
Published online: 4 June 2012
Published online: 4 June 2012
Rachel Nowak explains why improving communication standards will be essential in the drive to speed research translationPssst ... Want your research findings or health guidelines to change how doctors treat patients? Then take a tip from an ex-journo: Use plain English. Keep it short. Tell stories.
Journalists have, for centuries, used these tools first to hook ...
Rachel Nowak explains why improving communication standards will be essential in the drive to speed research translation
Pssst ... Want your research findings or health guidelines to change how doctors treat patients? Then take a tip from an ex-journo: Use plain English. Keep it short. Tell stories.
Journalists have, for centuries, used these tools first to hook readers and then to change their hearts, minds and behaviour.
Over those same centuries, the medical research community, whose existence rests on its ability to change behaviour to reduce human suffering, has all but lost its ability to communicate.
A century ago, scientific papers could be as easy to read as The New York Times.1 Today, few people would relish flicking through a research paper or clinical guideline as they munch their cornflakes. But that is exactly the standard of writing needed in the drive to bridge the decades-long gap between medical discovery and improved patient care.
Globally, medical research organisations are investing serious time and money in attempts to speed up research translation. Strategies include creating “disease networks” of researchers, policymakers, patients and practitioners to improve the chances that research will mesh with needs and that findings will be put into practice; using designated “knowledge brokers” to channel information between key players; and tying research funding to translation.
But all efforts will be hamstrung if insufficient attention is paid to the lifeblood of learning and change: communication. It’s like trying to run a car without oil — the components are all there, but without it the car grinds to a halt.
What is needed is nothing less than an overhaul of what is considered an acceptable standard of communication. If a research report, health guideline or policy brief is not well written and in plain English, it should be rejected until it has been rewritten and reworked. Accepting anything less will exasperate and ultimately exclude all but those already in the know. That is, it will exclude the very people it needs to reach.
And, no, plain English does not mean doing away with complexity, specialist knowledge and technical terms. It is not “dumbing down”. It is writing clearly and concisely, while keeping in mind the diversity of the desired audience and avoiding jargon that is unfamiliar to that audience. It is time-consuming; hard work to learn, and to execute. It feels uncomfortable because ideas are more clearly exposed and there’s no hiding behind weasel words.
But it means that the hiccups that delay translation — a poor description of an intervention; an ambiguously written guideline; a poorly conceived research question — are spotted quickly and set right. It means that researchers from other disciplines, policymakers, health advocates and even patients have a fighting chance of understanding the gist of a research paper, the importance of a systematic literature review and the relevance of a health guideline.
Another tool from the journalist formulary — story-telling — should also be harnessed in the drive to bridge the gap between knowing and doing. We learn about our world through narratives. Readability is improved by using simple narratives — for example, describing in the active voice (“we did X, Y and Z”) the events that led to the conclusions of a research paper or the production of a systematic literature review. This technique is used to good effect in Cochrane reviews, but richer narratives also have a role because they get our attention in a way mere facts and figures do not (Box). Could, for example, narratives depicting clinicians using guidelines to treat patients improve practice? The key would be not to diminish the importance of the evidence, but to illuminate it, put it in a human context, and make it matter enough emotionally for health professionals to take the time to understand it, recall it, and use it.
A few small islands of communication excellence do exist. But what is needed is a universal commitment to rapidly improving communication standards so that knowledge owned by one part of the medical research enterprise can be shared with each and every other part.
Only this will break open the silos, get the information flowing, and speed the translation of hard-wrought knowledge into better health.
Tell me a story . . .
narratives can trump statistics when it comes to getting a person to understand and recall health information
stories depicting people similar to the audience may be particularly effective at overcoming resistance to a message2
one small study found that personal stories are better at convincing some policymakers to act3
Competing interests
I run a consultancy, Rachel Nowak and Associates, specialising in science policy, analysis and communications.
References
- Knight J. Scientific literacy: clear as mud. Nature 2003; 423: 376-378. 0_i1115610
- Kreuter MW, Green MC, Cappella JN, et al. Narrative communication in cancer prevention and control: a framework to guide research and application. Ann Behav Med 2007; 33: 221-235. 0_i1115612
- Brownson RC, Dodson EA, Stamatakis KA, et al. Communicating evidence-based information on cancer prevention to state-level policy makers. J Natl Cancer Inst 2011; 103: 306-316. 0_i1115616
Provenance: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.