Designing a train ticket website? If the usability is poor, I might buy the wrong ticket. Designing an online booking system? Bad usability could lead to a lot of confusion and unnecessary phone calls. Designing a medical device? Bad usability could kill someone.
I recently attended the NUJ’s Reporting on our health services masterclass. It was about how to carry out quality reporting on health issues, at a time when the cuts and restructuring in our health service are mirrored by cuts and restructuring in our newsrooms.
A acquaintance of mine, a vet, reported today from the “Every Pet, Every Time” UK conference that 70% of human patients have forgotten their doctor’s advice 60 seconds after leaving the consulting room. She commented that doctors and vets have much to learn on communication.
How far would you go to save the NHS? One man is running all the way from Cardiff to London. Dr Clive Peedell, a consultant in the NHS, started his journey at the Aneurin Bevan statue on Queen Street, Cardiff, and since then has run (in stages, obviously) all the way to Witney.
When you get your blood pressure taken at the doctor’s, what do you see?
When I think of blood pressure readings I imagine numbers on a display, but my actual experience of blood pressure measurement is different.
Not once, in all my years of visiting the doctor, have I seen the front of a blood pressure monitor in the surgery. It’s always positioned so that the doctor can see the numbers, but I can’t.
The spending cuts we’re facing today will not only be the largest since World War II, but perhaps also the most heavily spun. Finding out the real impact of the cuts means going beyond the press releases and searching for the small print in lengthy documents.
Health reporter John Lister has spent the past 26 years doing just that. He has become a familiar face on television as one of the few experts who can provide informed comment on NHS funding.