According to a recent study by the New Health Media Network, more than 80% of visitors surveyed could recall advertisements seen in waiting rooms and treatment rooms. The advertisements---framed wall posters or commercials broadcast on widescreen digital televisions---were noticed by a large percentage of staff and visitors alike, and approximately half of all respondents reported the posters being more informative than the digital broadcasts. 

While this finding may fulfill the economic dreams of ad agencies, advertisers, and their assorted consultants, the study reveals that patients spend a disturbing amount of time---an average of three hours and twenty minutes---being exposed to advertising while visiting healthcare facilities. And while a portion of the information on offer may very well be of interest to some consumers, it is this writer's opinion that doctors' offices, hospitals, emergency rooms and other healthcare facilities should be places where peace, quiet, and relative freedom from commercial interests hold sway.  

In our media-saturated world, advertisements scream from gasoline pumps, clothing, shopping bags, televisions, radios, and any number of other media and surfaces which we encounter from day to day. Taking into consideration that television ads for prescription drugs have been banned from television in the European Union, it seems that, here in the U.S., we will allow any number of corporate interests to market their wares to us, even when we're at our most vulnerable. 

From pharmaceutical companies to health insurance, the business of advertising and corporate influence in American healthcare is rampant. As doctors are jetted to exclusive resorts and golf courses by pharmaceutical reps with seemingly unlimited expense accounts, some patients continue to pay exorbitant prices for medications not covered by insurance, and the disabled on fixed incomes are caught between an economic rock and a hard place. 

That said, constant exposure to healthcare advertisements and infomercials does not necessarily benefit our health, and while healthcare facilities may receive some financial compensation for allowing such advertisements to be shown in their waiting rooms and treatment areas, it is this wrtier's opinion that American healthcare consumers would be much better off left to their own devices, to read a magazine, to talk with one another, and to be free of the influence of marketers and companies cynically seeking to capitalize on our health and healthcare practices.

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NurseKeith is a nurse, consultant, writer, and blogger. Please feel free to visit his blog, Digital Doorway.  

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