TORONTO — Misinformation in pediatric medicine, like other areas of medicine, is widely regarded as a major public health threat, but the good news is that a new survey reveals that pediatricians still believe their counsel is respected by patients and families.
While the longer survey of the two captures an array of issues regarding life and practice, the shorter “checkpoint” survey addresses a high-priority topic. In 2023, it was health misinformation. The data from this survey were presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting. However, relatively few respondents appeared to be concerned about the ability of pediatricians to address the problem of misinformation, Ms. Gottschlich reported.
For reproductive health, gender-affirming care, and firearm injury prevention, about 80% of respondents answered at the very low end of the scale, meaning no more than about once per month. Encounters with misinformation was slightly greater with; nearly one third responded that they encountered misinformation once a week or more frequently.
When stratified by clinical focus, the encounters varied. For the COVID-19 vaccine, general pediatricians were far more likely to report addressing misinformation on a weekly or more frequent basis than hospitalists or subspecialists . They were more than twice as likely to encounter misinformation about the HPV vaccine than hospitalists or pediatric subspecialists .