Why medical information will get better

I’ve been taking pills. They’ve done wonders for my backache. And the name of this rejuvenating cure is ‘Rheumatac Retard 75’.

Rheumatac Retard. Can you feel the healing power? The warm glow of wellbeing? Me neither. Describing medicines has been a litigious, closely guarded business for as long as people have been taking them. So we get this odd language, locked down by regulation and detached from its audience.

But things have got better. Last week the British National Formulary published new guidelines on medicine instruction labels, based directly on user testing. The researchers found some people misunderstood phrases such as ‘avoid alcoholic drink’, but were clear if told ‘don’t drink alcohol while taking this medicine.’

Then there are Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) — those cleverly folded sheets of smallprint you get with every box of medicine. If you’re writing a PIL it must now be tested to prove patients can understand it. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s report Always Read the Leaflet has enough good advice on this to overwhelm most writers.

But there’s a bigger force on the side of clear patient information: the democratic power of the Internet.

Thanks to Google, we’re coming to expect that we can quickly find technical information on anything — a fridge, a bank account, a cure for backache — and that it’ll be written in a way we can understand.

Gerry McGovern points out that this knowledge was previously trapped inside a manual in a box sold with the product. But now it’s available online before we buy — and we’re judging products on the quality of this information.

This has massive implications for the way we choose and use every kind of product, including medicines. Ultimately, those who describe medical products will be forced to include patients in the conversation, not just because of regulation, but to avoid a more basic threat: being ignored.

Thomas Heath

The benefits of sounding like Jamie Oliver

You may not want to resemble Jamie Oliver in any way, but his writing has qualities of energy, confidence and ownership that any organisation can harness by changing a few writing habits.

So let’s take a peek at The Naked Chef. Here’s a passage I sometimes use in workshops:

“I do love food – I’m obsessed by it. I think about breakfast in the evening and dinner at breakfast. I often daydream about family dinners ten days in advance… It goes a bit like this: English asparagus has come in, the peas are sweet and bursting in your mouth, the mint in the herb box is growing like the clappers and strangling the rosemary, leafy Sicilian lemons are about – bloody hell, this is great – I know for a fact that I’ve got some extra virgin olive oil stashed in the back of the cupboard at home, some great Arborio risotto rice, some tagliatelle or spaghetti even, I’ve got fresh organic eggs which are double-yolkers and golden and I’ve got a couple of those goose eggs from Mr Turnip down Borough Market. I could make a frittata with some Pecorino and Parmesan, or maybe some goat’s cheese. My mouth’s beginning to water; right, I’ll buy those peas mate and I’ll have that asparagus. I’ll eat some of these peas raw while I’m waiting to pay.”

It’s convincing because he writes as he speaks. He crams each line with detail that supports his point (that it’s great to love food). Everything is positive. And he uses the active voice.

Too many organizations are guilty of stamping out the active voice. Compare ‘I’ll fix this’ with ‘This will be fixed’. The first statement is active. The action and the person doing it are made clear. And the writer has taken ownership for fixing. It says here’s a positive, hands-on working culture where people naturally think, speak and write in an active way: ‘I’ll check that for you; I’ll follow this up; we’ll work it out…’

The second is passive and unclear: who will fix it? It’s the talk of an impersonal, disengaged work culture: ‘this will be reviewed; arrangements have been made; a resolution will be reached; you’ll be informed in due course…’

People still say ‘it’s more than my job’s worth’ without irony. This is a passive statement about being passive to a passive situation. Any taste of action or involvement is lost deep in a layer-cake of negativity.

Language and attitudes reinforce each other. I work with several FTSE100 companies who have invested in switching to active language for all their written communications, because they understand that sounding just a bit more like Jamie is a pukka way to embed a positive work ethic.

Toxic language

Language that failed to explain is partly to blame for the state of our economy. The system that relied on confidence fell to a confidence trick, because it trusted jargon that hid the truth about value at risk.