Nocebic organizations

An interesting new paper explores the idea that healthcare organizations can be nocebic. That is, they can make people worse rather than better, much like a careless individual professional can.

“An organization acting as a nocebo could create negative experiences along the patient’s care pathway, possibly exacerbating their symptoms and worsening their clinical condition.”

I’ve encountered many organizations that act like nocebos. 😒

Indeed, what bothers people about “mainstream medicine” has much more to do with the institutionalization of care than with medicine itself, or medical science. Most large organizations, if they were people, would be assholes.

The lead author of this paper is David Poulter, a long-time professional acquaintance of mine, and the most tireless science educator on Twitter I know — seriously, does he sleep? — a fine example of how there are still good people there, doing good things, despite that platform’s many dysfunctions.