Risk Management and Healthcare Policy Dovepress a Study of the Changes in How Medically Related Events Are Reported in Japanese Newspapers

Media reports of medically related events have a major effect on the healthcare community but there have been few detailed investigations conducted to investigate their content. The Nikkei Telecom 21 database was used to investigate the number of reports concerning medically related events between 1992 and 2007 in Japan's 5 national newspapers. For this period, both the total number of articles and the number of articles containing medically-related keywords were determined. The number of reports relating to medically related occurrences increased sharply from 1999 to 2000 and displayed a decrease from 2003 before increasing again in 2008. As of 2008, such reports account for 0.17% of total newspaper articles. The use of the word 'iryokago' (medical professional negligence or error) drastically increased in 1999 but showed a consistent decrease from 2004. On the other hand the frequency of reports relating to 'litiga-tion' and 'punishment' increased rapidly in 1999 before leveling off. Despite this, the number of articles relating to medically related occurrences that were caused by doctor shortages and system errors increased sharply between 2006 and the present. Results indicate that the manner in which newspapers report medically related events is undergoing major changes. Medically related events represent a major problem for the healthcare community. In the United States, the healthcare provision system is influenced by the medical malpractice insurance crisis that occurred in the early 1970s. 1 Society's interest in this issue increased further due to the medically related occurrence that took place at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 1994. 2 In this particular case, a breast cancer patient was administered an overdose of an anticancer drug and, as this patient was also the health columnist for the Boston Globe newspaper, the story was elevated to the front page. This incident prompted the United States to review and improve medically related occurrence measures 3 and stimulated research into the media coverage of medically related occurrences. 4 Meanwhile, high-profile medical institutions in Japan have been accused of negligence and committing errors 5 following a string of medically related occurrences including two 1999 cases in which a patient was administered a fatal IV drip at the Tokyo Metropolitan Hiroo Hospital and in which surgery was performed on the wrong patient at the Yokohama City University Hospital, 6 and a 2001 case in which a heart-lung machine malfunctioned during heart surgery at the Tokyo Women's Medical University. 7 The Tokyo Metropolitan Hiroo …