Question: Effective medical communication answers one specific question.

Quickbite for the busy: Answer only one main question per document.

Do you remember the year 2005? I don't, except that I had braces, long hair and went to see "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

My expections were low, I thought the title was really stupid. Imagine my surprise when I found myself crying of laughter for 110 minutes and running for the next bookstore to purchase the book.

Its story provides the big answer: “Of Life. The Universe. Everything.” And the answer is fourty-two.[1]

Unless your big problem of life, the universe and everything happens to be six times seven, this answer is not particularly useful. The same is true in medical communication:

Medical communication without a specific question in mind is “almost, but not quite, completely useless”.[1]

Give your audience a useful answer to one interesting question. This will notably increase the probability that they will actually read it.[2]

How specific should I be?

Unless you are in the lucky position where people approach you and ask good questions, you have to come up with an interesting question yourself. The twist: it must be interesting and useful to your reader.

If your topic is too broad, it's not useful. If it's too narrow, it will help fewer readers. Figure 1 shows a specificity axis. While the specificity of the question increases from left to right, so does its potential usefulness. The number of people who find the answer helpful, however, decreases. I recommend aiming at the red area.

Figure 1: Specificity axis. The specificity of the question increases from left to right, so does its potential usefulness. The potential audience, however, decreases.

Why should I focus on one question when I could answer one hundred questions with one document?

Busy healthcare professionals who seek to make a specific treatment decision will not waste time plowing through a pile of data that may or may not contain a solution to their problem. In fact, they can't.

Allen and Harkins surveyed an acute medical unit in a relatively quiet period. They saw 18 patients with 44 diagnoses. Reading the respective clinical practice guidelines for those diagnoses (3679 pages) would take 122 hours.[3] This sounds neither efficient, nor effective. It sounds impossible.

How can I find out which questions are interesting and useful?

You will be buried in data after your research. Some of which will be fascinating, breathtaking, provocative, unusual, amazing, eye-opening, amusing – to you. It doesn’t really matter. There is only one entity that defines what is interesting to your audience: your audience.

The following strategies will help you hone your questions:

• Listen to your reader or somebody who talks to them.

• Find out what they have asked about in similar areas.

• Read effective medical information and evaluate its specificity.

Consistently finding the best question to answer is herculean, but don’t worry, I’m here to help.

References:

[1] Douglas A. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. New York: Del Rey® Books; 2005.

[2] Cutts M. Oxford Guide to Plain English. 5th ed. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press; 2020. Chapter 2, Organizing your material in a reader-centered structure; p.10.

[3] Allen D, Harkins KJ. Too much guidance? Lancet. 2005 May 21-27;365(9473):1768. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(05)66578-6. PMID: 15910948.

Do you have comments, doubts or (specific) questions for me?

… if you want to take a more detailed look into specific questions together.

See you soon, best wishes