How we talk about food

Two stories from the last week have highlighted the complexities regarding communication about food. The Corn Refiners Association is looking a new word for high-fructose corn syrup, preferring the name corn sugar. But there are a lot of skeptics about the reason for the rebranding, as seen in the comments in the New York Times Health blog. While the Corn Refiners Association says they are looking for a more accurate name, some health advocates think the move is an effort to confuse consumers into thinking corn syrup is healthy.

The other story is about carrots. The baby carrot association is spending $25 million on a new advertising campaign to market the bite-sized carrots as a fun snack, even as fun as junk food. But it seems no matter how much health advocates push vegetables, it seems we are not eating them.

So why is communication about food so difficult? What strategies would you suggest to communicate about healthy food?

Communication through touch

The New York Times Well blog has an interesting discussion today about a recent JAMA essay. In the JAMA essay, a medical student contemplates even and when it is appropriate to hold a patient's hand. Some of the Well commenters were mystified that a medical student would even need to ask if it is appropriate to hold a patient's hand and show compassion. But in the current medical culture, students are taught to be very aware of how actions, even as simple an action as holding a hand, may be viewed.

It is the reality of physician-patient communication, that the physician may always have some level of concern about communication being misconstrued. And this fear has the real potential to limit high-quality communication between physician and patient. All communication involves some risk, the risk of being misunderstood. But a physician taking a risk and offering a hand to a patient at a difficult moment can mean the world to a patient.

Learning to talk the talk

Theresa Brown, a registered nurse and regular contributor to the New York Times wrote an article this week about nurses learning how to talk quickly in emergent patient settings. The style of speech values speed, with elements of persuasion, especially when trying to get a patient a needed bed in the ICU.

But the article does not explore the potential pitfalls of such rapid fire conversation. The possibility of mistakes was acknowledged, but more than mistakes, the rapid conversation can have long term implications for the health of communication between colleagues. Short, clipped conversation does not allow for collaboration or learning and working together to support and care for patients. Certainly there are time when this style may be very necessary, and it does fall on health care workers to learn how to communicate that way. But there is a time for longer, thought out conversations as well, even on a busy hospital floor. We are all better off if health care providers are able to develop multiple communication tools and styles and not just depend on one quick style to get all things done.

Teaching with patients, from the beginning

The New York Times had an article today about a medical school program that is turning the traditional medical student schedule on its head. New York University is now exposing students to patients from their very first day as medical students, rather than waiting until they are third year students as many traditional programs do.

NYU is not the first program to introduce a patient element in the first year of medical school. But such efforts point to medical schools' awareness that the process of medical education can be emotionally draining. Students who lose sight of why they are training to be doctors may find themselves experiencing "empathy erosion." Patient contact from the beginning helps these physicians in training remember they are learning not to treat diseases, but to treat patients.

Battlefield humor and patient-physician communication

Dr. Michael Khan explores the pervasiveness of "battlefield humor" in this week's New York Times Cases section. Beyond being dehumanizing, and just plain rude, demeaning humor used to describe patients may have a direct impact on communication with the patient and ultimately on patient care. If a physician automatically assumes that a patient's behavior is because of some character flaw, or because the patient is a "whale" or the patient's "crazy," the physician may miss a real symptom or indication. And the humor certainly creates a barrier to building a trusting relationship between physician and patient.

Physicians certainly work in a stressful environment and certainly not all of their patients are pleasant. But what are some alternative that physician might consider to this battlefield humor? How can communication scholars demonstrate the affect this humor has on patients?

When words, and friends, fail

An essay in The New York Times today highlights the difficulty of going through a health crisis and having friends seemingly disappear. Psychologists are beginning to explore what people experience when they are witness to other's traumas. Part of the difficulty, is that words fail, and friends don't know what to say to a sick friend or how to help. The other difficulty is not so much a lack of empathy, but too much empathy. When a healthy friend can picture herself or her child as sick as the sick friend, it may give them cause to pull away from that friend in need.

Sometimes the right words and the right actions don't come naturally. But knowing our own fears and vulnerabilities may help us think twice and reach out to those in need.

The challenges of psychosocial research

An article in the New York Times today highlights some of the particular challenges of psychosocial research. The article discusses the challenges of personality analysis, specifically as it applies to research of generations. Is it possible to analyze and assess a collective generational personality? Are there flaws in how researchers try to measure personality, behavior and attitude?

Measuring attitude is a difficult task, because even at its best, you have what the participant says and some sort of scale or means of interpreting what it means. There is a lot of room for error: the participant may just say what he thinks the researcher wants to hear, the participant may says what is socially desirable, the researcher may interpret the responses incorrectly or the researcher may think he is measuring one thing when he is actually measuring something else. This is why different mechanisms for validating behavioral scales are so important. The work is extremely valuable in that it can teach us something about ourselves and how we approach our world. But it is indeed a challenge.