Reviewing websites, videos and other media
A journal's review section covers more than books: websites, lecture-video sites, bookmarking tools, podcasts and documentaries are reviewed there too. Reviewing them takes a resource review with its own anatomy, a comparison of two resources on axes the reviewer names, and, for a documentary, a test of its evidence against its framing.
What a review section covers
In 2008 the AMWA Journal asked for suggestions of books, videos, CD-ROMs and websites for its Media Reviews. One 2008 issue reviewed a book of clinical images for bedside diagnosis, a tax guide for writers and other freelancers, and two websites.
Its Summer 2017 issue announced that, having reviewed the best books available partly on members' recommendations, the journal was expanding into reviews of alternative media: expert blogs, journal articles, broadcasts and podcasts, and websites, as well as books. The section's remit stayed media of practical value or topical interest for medical writers and editors.
The anatomy of a resource review
A 2008 review of the eMedicine website shows the anatomy of a resource review. It states what the resource is and who hosts it, what it contains and at what scale, who writes the content and how it is peer reviewed, how its currency is signalled, and what its continuing education costs and who accredits it. It then lists specific shortcomings, each with its consequence spelled out: statements are not individually referenced, so a reader who wants to verify or cite one must find its source among the whole bibliography; a Medline link leads to a summary rather than the original article; and the site excludes original research and material by non-physician experts. Its verdict is that the site is useful, with limitations.
A review of a lecture-video site in the same issue names the coverage, how content is contributed and how copyright holders control it, the navigation problem of scrolling through each of 33 specialties to find a lecture, and the search box that leads to specific institutions or speakers. It notes that each video's length and rating are given and that video quality varies widely, and it closes by advising the reader to go online and see where the current takes them.
A podcast review in the journal's Summer 2018 issue covers the Best Science Medicine Podcast's four-part series on medical cannabinoids. It names who hosts and presents the podcast: the Therapeutics Education Collaboration, with a pharmacist and a family physician, both professors. It gives the podcast's aim, to inform rational treatment in primary care from the best available evidence and to enable patients to take part in shared and informed decision making, and its scale: 378 episodes since 2008, most on one medical issue, some topics taking a two- to four-episode series, interspersed with episodes on listeners' questions. It then says what the series did and concluded, and what backs it: a research article and clinical practice guideline in a peer-reviewed journal. The hosts' humour brings a casual tone that engages the audience even as the terminology of clinical trials gets technical, and a listener not adept with that terminology may find it difficult to comprehend fully on first listen but can get up to speed with a few online searches. The reviewer found the series highly informative, well researched and "light enough to digest on an evening stroll", and a possible valuable resource for decisions in patient care, and the review closes on where to subscribe.
Comparing two resources
A 2008 paired review of two personal-bookmarking websites shows what reviewing two resources together involves. It reviews each site separately, covering how material is saved and retrieved, whether registration is needed, and what can be shared and with whom. It then compares them on two axes it names explicitly, the amount of openness to the community and the method of retrieving search results. The recommendation keeps both: one site is faster for retrieving information on a specific topic, the other can be used to throw the net widely in a search, and both are worth adding to a browser toolbar.
Reviewing a documentary
A 2010 review of the documentary Money-Driven Medicine tests whether the film's own material supports its argument. The review gives the producer, Alex Gibney, the director, Andrew Fredericks, and the running time of 86 minutes, and says where the film can be rented or bought and where to find public screenings. It states the film's thesis: health care in America is not serving the needs of patients, and the blame is spread across hospital corporations that overbuild to satisfy shareholders and must then sell an oversupply of services, insurers that pay physicians by procedures and tests performed regardless of benefit to the patient, and drug and device companies selling overpriced products no better than the ones they replace. It quotes the film's own voices, including a cardiologist's complaint that physicians are reimbursed for doing things and not for talking to patients.
The review then turns the film's evidence against its framing. Two of the breakdowns in the system the film presents point, evidently unintentionally, at the behaviour of clinicians rather than at the corporations: a burns patient who suffered a cascade of complications after the hospital staff's lax response to a blocked bile duct, and a physician whose daughter's medical team threatened to sue him when he balked at continuing what he felt was an ineffective treatment plan. When that physician found that a doctor offering experimental treatment had not told him the truth, the viewer could read corporate pressure to sell the treatment between the lines, but the film offers no evidence for it. The review reports the producer's stated aim from a post-screening appearance, to serve as an agent provocateur revealing the economic forces that harm the practice of medicine in the United States, and to make a film about what he calls capitalist fundamentalism. It notes that the question-and-answer session that followed became more of a gripe session, showing the public's frustration with the US health care system and the audience's insistence that a filmmaker addressing it should have some answers. Its verdict is that the film is an ambitious treatment of a subject that defies reduction to simple problems with clear-cut solutions, but that by painting it as good doctors against evil corporations it does a disservice to anyone hoping for an impartial investigation.