My right arm hurt.
I hadn’t fallen or slept on it wrong or tweaked it during one of my strenuous dad-time pursuits (carpooling children, grilling meatstuffs, etc.). It just hurt. The pain came in the form of a steady throb that was pronounced during idle moments and barely noticeable otherwise.
Initially I went with the tried-and-true treatment option of ignoring the discomfort. When it didn’t magically disappear, I did what every other person too distracted to visit an actual medical professional does: Fire up the ol’ Google machine.
My search for “right arm pain” revealed that pain in my left arm could signify imminent cardiac distress. Good to know! I ruled out bursitis (isn’t that an elbow kinda thing?) and repetitive use disorder (the only activity I repeat often enough to qualify is typing) before settling on a foolproof diagnosis of swimmer’s shoulder. That, per the Google panel on the
right side of the screen, is “pain caused by connective tissue rubbing on a shoulder blade.”
When I finally conceded defeat and saw a doctor months later, I presented this diagnosis as a medical certainty on par with “my nose is on my face.” The doctor’s resigned look suggested that most of her appointments now begin this way: with the patient presenting a solution found during a web search and expecting her to affirm it.
Such is the health-media environment in which HCPs find themselves mired. Healthcare used to be the one exception to the maxim that the customer is always right; physicians were the all-knowing authorities whose verdicts were not subject to appeal. Now HCPs find themselves having to debunk information, some of it erroneous, before the examination even commences.
MM+M’s fifth annual Health Media issue is headlined by a look at how the marketing and media communities have united to ensure that providers understand the social media undercurrents swirling around patient treatment (“Health’s Social Sway”). But it also dives deep on positive media developments, whether in the form of more engaging content at the point of care (“A content revolution at the point of care”) or Bayer’s bold bid to in-source media planning and buying (“Has media in-housing found a home in pharma?”).
And yes, we reprint in its entirety the auto-response we received from Twitter’s crack media team when we sought comment about pharma-brand-friendliness in the Musk era (“Whither Twitter?”).
Eventually my arm pain — deemed a strain, for lack of a more specific diagnosis — went away. May all our health issues ultimately prove as minor and easily Googleable.
From the April 01, 2023 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
