Healthcare (medical, health, mental health, nursing, and other health professions) mind models (or mind maps) are not the same as those plain old “knowledge” mind maps you are used to seeing.

When you start to put a compelling and artistically sophisticated mind map together that gives symptoms for diseases or recommended treatments or medical information ranging from how to put on a bandage to how deal with your elderly mom’s dementia, you have entered the realm where misinformation can hurt people. Most of the health and medical information mind maps on archival websites like Biggerplate.com have errors of content ranging from being out-of-date to misleading to downright harmful. It is not necessarily enough to read something even from a definitive source and mind map it. Rather, you have to identify definitive sources and then know how to evaluate their claims against more recent research and regulations and criticisms by credible sources.

Being called (by yourself or another source) a professional or expert or inventor mind mapper does not mean that you are qualified to mind map health or medical information. It takes at least 22 years of total education to get through the formal training and supervised practice to meet the requirements of most types of professional health-related licensure in the USA. Physicians and nurse practitioners may need to complete as as many as 32 years of formal education and supervised practice. All licensed healthcare professionals are subject to requirements for continuing education requirements after completing training and licensure in most US jurisdictions for most fields.

So before you decide to read a book on dementia and make one of your wonderful artistic mind maps, think about whether you have the necessary professional training and experience to read the relevant research and clinical literature accurately and with the perspective and sophisticated judgment that can reject erroneous claims. And when you start to make claims that mind mapping or some herbal supplement or yoga or cognitive training or crossword puzzles or some exotic mumblings you heard in Haiti can cure or treat or prevent dementia, make sure you realize that if you provide false information you may be hurting people and possibly incurring a financial liability. I respect and use mind maps (and especially Huba mind models) from people who clearly have expertise in healthcare, medicine, psychology, and related fields. I do find the mind maps of “professional mind mappers” and mind map “inventors” and mind map developers to be very poor in their content when they try to stray into healthcare-related content they really do not understand and do not stay in the areas of management consulting, training, and brainstorming where they made their fortunes.

This is a consumer-beware situation as no one regulates mind maps and their content.

A mind model (AKA mind map) looking at the issues that can arise because healthcare mind maps are not typically within the expertise of individuals identified as expert mind mappers who have not been trained in a health-related field.

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