Barriers to Better Medical Writing

To the Editor: Dr. Michael Crichton's recent paper on medical obfuscation (N Engl J Med 293:1257–1259, 1975) stirred the medical writing community to evaluate its effectiveness; the consensus is that a real communication problem exists. We applaud Dr. Ingelfinger's proposal (N Engl J Med 294:546–547, 1976) that the student and graduate in medicine be encouraged to take up serious nonprofessional reading, but suggest that his recommendation is only a partial solution to a much larger problem — overspecialization and intellectual isolation among members of the profession. As medical students, we contend that the structure of the system is such. . .