How medically accurate are the Harlequin books?

PorterStarrByrd said:

Those novels are meant to entertain, not educate. Judging from how may are sold, thy must be doing OK. Never seen one in a textbook list for med school, probably won't

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No, but given that people learn a lot of what they think they know from entertainment, and misinformation can sometimes be dangerous, a lazy writer who includes blatantly false information does readers a great disservice. For instance, a book or movie that shows someone "saving a life" by applying a tourniquet and sucking venom out of a snakebite. This may seem like a relatively innocent little plot point, but in fact, emulating such behavior in real life (and many people still do) does harm.

And most of the time, getting those little details right wouldn't hurt the entertainment value of the story one whit.

For instance, if I see another story about psychic abilities that start with the false (and easily googled) assumption "Humans only use 10% of their brains!" I'll scream. Surely it's possible to drop the stupid and keep the fun part of the story.

As far as a Harlequin author who gets the medical RIGHT: I respectfully refer you to Kathleen Korbel's masterful "Some Men's Dreams" which got the doctor thing IMO as right as it can be got.

(Don't show my editor the above sentence.)

Roxxsmom said:

No, but given that people learn a lot of what they think they know from entertainment, and misinformation can sometimes be dangerous, a lazy writer who includes blatantly false information does readers a great disservice. For instance, a book or movie that shows someone "saving a life" by applying a tourniquet and sucking venom out of a snakebite. This may seem like a relatively innocent little plot point, but in fact, emulating such behavior in real life (and many people still do) does harm.

And most of the time, getting those little details right wouldn't hurt the entertainment value of the story one whit.

For instance, if I see another story about psychic abilities that start with the false (and easily googled) assumption "Humans only use 10% of their brains!" I'll scream. Surely it's possible to drop the stupid and keep the fun part of the story.

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I agree with roxxsmom. That's not the only way things can do harm. Misinformation about debilitating chronic conditions such as mental illness, chronic fatigue syndrome or any other can make life much worse for those suffering from them, for example increasing stigma, making an already stressed and ill person constantly have to debunk myths about their condition, especially those along such lines as it being cured if they just brighten up their attitude or take up a new hobby or something. It may seem like no big deal to the writer and 99% of readers but medical misinformation can potentially do a huge amount of harm. If you ask people who suffer from these kinds of conditions about what really annoys them and upsets them, having to debunk myths and constantly explain what their condition really is and how it really affects them is pretty high on the list. (I have personal experience of mental illness so can vouch for that from personal experience too.)

Additionally, there's been some research which shows that people who read information knowing it to be from a dubious source at the time can later recall the facts, not remember where they learn them, and so later recall them as being true and reliable. So even if someone knows that getting their medical facts from a novel is a bad idea, if two years later they forgot where they read it but the facts are knocking about in their brain, they can very easily come up with "oh yeah lupus. I've heard of that. I heard that you can cure it by going out in the sunshine and doing yoga every day." Perpetuating myths does a lot of harm.

And it doesn't spoil a story to get the medical facts right. Even if you're basing the plot around someone with lupus who cures themselves by going outside in the sunshine and doing yoga... you could do some medical research and find a suitable medical condition and a medically plausible reason why it cured them, e.g. they were misdiagnosed and didn't have lupus, they had seasonal affective disorder and vitamin D deficiency and that's why going out in the sunshine every day cured them.

Novels don't have to go into meticulous medical detail. Only the basic details that the characters in the story would know are needed - but those details need to be correct. And it doesn't take a ton of research to get the details right.

neandermagnon said:

I agree with roxxsmom. That's not the only way things can do harm. Misinformation about debilitating chronic conditions such as mental illness, chronic fatigue syndrome or any other can make life much worse for those suffering from them, for example increasing stigma, making an already stressed and ill person constantly have to debunk myths about their condition, especially those along such lines as it being cured if they just brighten up their attitude or take up a new hobby or something. It may seem like no big deal to the writer and 99% of readers but medical misinformation can potentially do a huge amount of harm. If you ask people who suffer from these kinds of conditions about what really annoys them and upsets them, having to debunk myths and constantly explain what their condition really is and how it really affects them is pretty high on the list. (I have personal experience of mental illness so can vouch for that from personal experience too.)

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This is very true too, and it doesn't just apply to medical issues either. I enjoy speculative fiction, and one advantage of that genre is that one can change the rules of how things work if needed for the plot. But even there, it can help to understand what you're playing around with.

Something to consider, of course, is whether the pov character might believe a common myth about something or think something isn't true. But there are ways to show the reader that the character in question is wrong as well (an example might be a character who heroically sucks venom out of a friend's snakebite, and when they get said friend to the hospital, the ER doctor tells them they actually endangered the friend's limb by doing this).

The hardest part is if the writer feels that the plot *needs* the myth to work, and they've written themselves into a corner without it, but sometimes more research will find a different solution to the problem.

Pretty sure that most, if not all, of the medicals I've read were written by nurses or former nurses. In my experience, they are much more medically accurate than any other Harlequin line. Though you need to keep in mind that it's a UK-based line and mostly set in the UK where the health care system is COMPLETELY different from the US. Obviously disease and injury is the same, but the way in which people are treated, the terminology and so on may not be what you're expecting. For instance, almost everyone who gives birth in the UK will have a midwife. Home birth is perfectly legal and, though not particularly common, not a weird crazy thing either. And so on.