In the last UM Cure 2020 Patient’s meeting, Dr. Emma Dorris ran a workshop entitled “The Art of writing to be understood”, where early career researchers worked with experienced patients on previously published research summaries.

The importance of communication in science

 

Scientific advances in medical research are meant to improve patients’ lives. Nevertheless, these achievements are not always easy readable by those who will profit from them the most.

 

Dr. Emma Dorris, from the University College Dublin, is a Molecular Biologist by training and the initiator of the Patient and Public Involvement in Research (PPI) initiative called “The Patient Voice in Arthritis Research”.

Through her own research work, Dr. Emma realized that there is a barrier between research communications and patients. That barrier is mostly created due to the scientific lexicon which is considered deemed for science communication papers. In more appropiated words, investigators tend to use terms they’ve learned through their specialization, which are, naturally, unknown to the general public.

 

Medical care is evolving in so patients are empowered with scientific-based decisions regarding their health. Having readable information on the latest hot topic of a given disease should be the norm.

 

In the last UM Cure 2020 Patient’s meeting Dr. Emma Dorris ran a workshop entitled “The Art of writing to be understood”. Early career researchers worked with experienced patients on previously published research summaries in order to make them more readable to the general public. The feedback received was outstanding and both researchers and patients felt that this is not only a profitable exercise as it should be a mandatory one.

 

In the following weeks we will be publishing the corrected lay abstracts that resulted from Dr. Emma's workshop in our page. We are looking forward to hear your feedback on them!

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