(479) Aspiring Academics Project: Dispensing the Truth: Recognizing and Combating Medical Misinformation

Objective : Examine the influence of medical misinformation and discuss strategies for identifying and combating medical misinformation through education and training.

Methods: A literature review was performed using Cochrane Library and PubMed to collect literature on medical misinformation. Relevant articles were then categorized into defining medical misinformation, establishing why it is a problem, and outlining strategies on how to address it.

Results: Medical misinformation is disseminated through many different platforms that are accessible to patients and healthcare providers and the use of this misinformation has been shown to lead to patient harm. The identification of credible resources is a crucial skill for health care providers to possess in order to assist patients in navigating the wealth of accessible information. Given the dynamic nature of drug information accessibility and its variable quality, evidence-based approaches to utilizing drug information resources should be encouraged throughout pharmacy curricula and the importance of this as a lifelong skill emphasized. While medical misinformation will never fully be mitigated, skill development in analyzing information to determine its reliability is the key to success in combating its spread.

Conclusions: Identifying medical misinformation is imperative for future healthcare professionals and their patients in an effort to optimize care. The “critical analysis” of “other information resources” is a required curricular element in the ACPE 2025 standards, and incorporating training on medical misinformation into curricula integrates well with this requirement. Ongoing research is needed to understand how the spread of medical misinformation occurs as well as the education needed to prevent it from compromising patient care.