Media reporting of the recent "flu outbreak" created unnecessary fears, according to Forum, the magazine of the Irish College of General Practitioners.
Journalists should consider adopting the medical dictum "first do no harm", writes its medical editor, Dr Leonard Condren, in the current issue.
Many of those who attended doctors' surgeries "attended out of fear and the media were responsible for much of that fear", he writes.
One woman stayed in her house for three weeks for fear of catching a "killer virus", according to Dr Condren.
"She ought to have attended earlier with a non-flu related complaint but was afraid to go out." Another woman brought her six-month-old baby to Dr Condren's clinic, fearful the child had the "killer virus".
Dr Condren, who said in a previous issue of Forum that he believed many of those who sought treatment were suffering from a respiratory viral infection other than true influenza, blames the media for such cases.
"Does anybody in journalism feel any sense of responsibility for the worry caused to these two people?" he asks.
Dr Condren says he was so busy during the "flu outbreak" that "at the end of the day I was hard pressed to remember the names of many of the people I had seen, such was my level of fatigue. That work rate continued for approximately three weeks. Throughout those weeks the `flu story' occupied a prime media position."
Television, in particular, is likely to have a powerful impact on people's interpretation of their symptoms, he says.
"This impact is likely to be far greater if the television images are of people in respiratory distress wearing oxygen masks."