O erro médico na imprensa portuguesa: Quando os pacientes fazem parte da notícia

Abstract

This research addresses the quality of news pro­duction on medical error, as an essential factor in building public knowledge on the subject, in order to understand which characteristics define the news production of medical error and to what extent can they be explained by the periodicity and editorial ori­entation of the newspaper; which concept of medical error is transmitted by the news production on the subject; and who are the main actors in the journal­istic discourse about medical error. The editions of three Portuguese newspapers were analyzed, from 2008 to 2011, resulting in a corpus of 266 (4.2%) articles, which were classified according to the fol­lowing variables: the sources of information quoted (their status and specialty, in the case of doctors); the issues covered; and characteristic framework of the published information (tone, journalistic style, and the presence and number of information sources). Through quantitative content analysis, it was found that this topic is growing, essentially with negative news and information sources usually being identi­fied. There is no evidence to support that periodicity and editorial orientation explain the variations in these characteristics, except for the number of cited sources. News focused on the results of errors (death or injury), caused by “errors of omission” and “com­mission errors”, prevail, involving a variety of actors: they are, such as it happens in health information, in general, official sources and experts in health. Doctors and lawyers stand out, and special attention is given to patients.