Health Care Communication: A cluttered one.
I woke up one day, realizing that there was no dial tone on my home phone. Back then, cell phone was not in vogue, therefore, I felt that the only option that was left to me to keep in touch with the world was the public phones on the streets, while impatiently waiting for my home phone to be fixed. It turned out that it was not the best option, because coughing was all I did after I hang up with a friend whom I was speaking with from a public phone. I am guessing that I caught the virus from the phone’s handset.
As the days went by, my condition got progressively worse, to the point that my friends, my family, along with random strangers; would be giving me unrequested diagnostics of my case. They will say things like, “You are probably catching a cold, you should take some ‘Day Quill’…”, or “I am suspecting that it is probably an attack to pneumonia, if I were you, I would buy some Thera Flu”, and some of them suggested some natural remedies. Let alone, the variety of cough medicine that I saw on the shelves at Rite Aid. All of these created confusion in my mind, and I simply did not know which direction to go.
Some people may say they have not had this experience. Although, the reality may be that, they have just probably never experienced the clutter in this fashion, still have in a different fashion. The clutter occurs when you are receiving tons of information which for the most part conflicts with each other. For instance, someone may have chest pain, and before going to the doctor, decides to pay a visit to ‘You tube’. ‘Google’, ‘Ask Jeeves’, and so on. Each of these websites may suggest something different, yet evokes some sense of clutter in the mind of the reader. As a result, when the person finally made it to the doctor’s office, he or she is loaded with different causes of the chest pain as well as different ways to get rid of it; and he or she may feel reluctant to be corporative with the doctor’s instructions.
I honestly believe that the increase of technology will always cause health care communication to be bombarded with clutter. The reason is, as human, we like to try different options, because it takes away the burden of not having our curiosity satisfied.