Medical Terminology as a Communication Barrier

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Table of Contents

Project Research Question or Aim
Background
Critical Appraisal
Project Plan
References

Project Research Question or Aim

This research aims to take a deeper look into the impact of medical terminology as a communication barrier in healthcare. This paper will evaluate the current evidence on medical literacy and what service users understand by medical terminologies. The project will identify how patients, mediators, and healthcare providers cope with various medical languages as part of this aim.

Background

The UK is one of those countries that are enriched with diversified societies. Initially, Britain was interested in establishing a diverse community, which could mean a mighty empire. As a result, it focused on integrating many people into its system, including Africans, Indians, Europeans, and individuals from the Caribbean. This unification led to the development of a multicultural society where these individuals spoke different languages and shared other religions. Today, the community continues to be variegated as the people are now sectioned based on their literacy levels, medical skills, race, language, and other diversifying units. In a hospital setting, cultural differences among individuals have been met with challenges as the use of medical terminologies continues to soar among medical practitioners. Those healthcare providers who are not culturally aware overuse medical jargon, resulting in psychological impacts that can cause individuals to feel embarrassed or even lower their health-seeking behavior. When medical argots are overly used in healthcare contexts, most patients often turn to unreputable websites for guidance or self-diagnose, leading to misinformation and poor prognosis (Fage‐Butler & Nisbeth Jensen, 2018). Principally, healthcare organizations fail to understand that patients can acknowledge prescription information and other treatment directions with less apprehensiveness.

Critical Appraisal

In their research, Watermeyer et al. undertook research on the role of medical terminologies in an interracial healthcare setting. Typical medical words applied in an interracial space can possess varied meanings to each involved party. The study examines how patients, and healthcare professionals consider the application of medical terminology and how each of these parties show acknowledgement based on an interactional context (Tawfik et al., 2019). The research uses a sociolinguistic approach to divide its data into two, talk-extrinsic and interactional data. In the talk-extrinsic data, it was found that there was a frequent lack of understanding from the patients.

In contrast, more minor patients lack an understanding of the medical terminologies for the interactional data. Additionally, the results identified a few patients who asked for a clarification of the medical terminology used by medical personnel. One of the most exciting things that this research found was the infrequent usage of medical terminologies among the patients without the doctors’ explicit verification of how the patients understand those terminologies. Nevertheless, one of the research weaknesses this study presents is that it focuses on the South African patients more than the Italians, where the latter could show different results than the former.

In another study conducted by Antoinette et al. on online patient-patient communication, various key things were highlighted. In this study, the author uses two forums dedicated to thyroid disease research where a patient was made to initiate a thread by posting a comment. According to the results, it was identified that numerous e-patients tended to use more dictionary-defined medical terminologies such as hematoma, tauopathies, and even papillary carcinoma thyroid cancer, which were some of the terms that the contemporary society considered technical. Furthermore, the findings suggest that numerous e-patients apply the medical terms without mistaking, establishing the assumption that is commonly seen among the healthcare providers on the usage of such jargon while handling various patients (Malkin & Ravert, 2019). Some of the weaknesses of this research include the failure to pinpoint how the usage of such terms correlates with the patient’s treatment, as it only states that medical practitioners tend to hate those term-savvy patients.

In the third study, Schnitzler et al. conducted research on how communication occurs in a radiation therapy education session. These authors focus on how medical terminologies influence patients’ clarity of confusion in this research. Some of the strengths of this study include outlining the results where it found n out many patients showed confusion during the educative process. In response, the RT replaced the medical terminology with a simpler word t allow these patients to understand the concept (Malkin & Ravert, 2019). Another strength of this study is that it tries to classify the medical jargon commonly used by medical personnel. It states the application of both contextual and general jargon. Of the two types, general parlance dominated more than contextual jargon. Nevertheless, the research fails to show whether medical terminology in a teaching session impacts patients the same as those in a treatment setting.

Project Plan

Methodological Approach

The methodological approach I plan to use in this study is the systematic literature review. This approach is necessary for my health-based survey as it will aid in identifying, selecting, and critically evaluating the available sources to answer the research question. Additionally, this proposition will help synthesize the available evidence after carefully sorting the seeds to find out the most relevant authority in line with the study. Some of the reasons for selecting the systematic literature review include easy source examination, suited for evidence-based practice, and reduced bias. The systematic literature review will help me examine the research activity’s range, extent, and nature, allowing effective planning before the research activity commences (Malkin & Ravert, 2019). Additionally, the systematic literature review is well-suited for evidence-based research. The actual practice can compare the theories presented in the various pieces of literature that practitioners are partaking in. Lastly, this approach reduces bias when it comes to source selection, meaning the elements of literature based on medical terminologies that will be selected will follow a more validated process.

Methodology

Key Terms

The key terms for this research include medical terminology, communication barriers, healthcare, and language barrier. These key terms are essential when conducting preliminary research where one wants to identify relevant valid articles that correlate to the research aim. Additionally, using key terms helps offset the duplication of previously addressed questions, such as those done by the authors described in the critical appraisal section. Key terms should be the starting point for the researcher to gain familiarity with a deep understanding of the study field. Generally, key terms prevent tackling problems that have already been solved.

Databases

Since many previous studies on language barriers result from medical terminologies, this research will require high-quality, independent information and well-established databases. The first database used in this research is Cochrane Open Access, which has six other databases inside to provide information for healthcare decision-making. Secondly, this research will use Digital Commons Network, a database hosting free full-text scholarly articles from various universities. This database has peer-reviewed journal articles, dissertations, conference proceedings, and working papers that can provide information on the state of communication in a healthcare setting. Lastly, the study will source some peer-reviewed articles from PubMed since it allows researchers to find medicine-related details, especially those concerning the general community.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The eligibility criteria for the information collected will be based on the study design and the date. The exclusion criteria will primarily focus on duplicated, abstract-only, unavailable full-texts papers. These papers in the exclusion category need to be stated beforehand to prevent any bias in future research. The inclusion criteria will include published articles focusing on patients and their communication techniques in a healthcare setting. The included papers will host information that directly answers the research question. Nevertheless, the included articles need to be clear and have enough positive and negative data to answer the question. In this study, we can consist of articles describing challenges experienced by patients with low literacy skills due to methodological terms usage.

Ethical Issues

Possible Ethical Concerns

Since a systemic literature review entails collecting and analyzing information from online articles and websites, personal data can be assembled without the participants’ knowledge. During the information collection process, it is possible to find some of the common terminologies used in a healthcare setting by a particular subsection of the population. This group might include women or even men patients who have been admitted. Additionally, the presence of e-patients increases the chances of patients’ data being left online, availing it to the research firms and advertisement companies. This critical data can be accessed with the participant’s knowledge and used in our or even other types of studies. An instance of such an ethical issue is exemplified by how Google has collaborated with CDC in predicting disease outbreaks using the algorithmic information that Google collects. To ensure no personal information is accessed without people’s knowledge, measures need to control research firms and websites to share personal data.

Solutions to Possible Ethical Issues

This research will apply two key considerations to ensure that the study adheres to the stipulated guidelines for handling personal information. Firstly, the study will need to protect the research participants, where the researchers will have to get informed consent on the usage of the online content of various individuals. To ensure informed consent is accorded, the researcher will have checked the box for permission to access personal information and investigate the available terms and conditions on using personal data. Secondly, the researchers will need to facilitate high-quality and ethically acceptable studies, mainly using credible sources from the databases such as Digital Commons Network. That way, this research will have solved most, though not all, ethical issues surrounding it.

References

Fage‐Butler, A. M., & Nisbeth Jensen, M. (2018). Medical terminology in online patient–patient communication: evidence of high health literacy? Health Expectations, 19(3), 643-653.

Tawfik, G. M., Dila, K. A. S., Mohamed, M. Y. F., Tam, D. N. H., Kien, N. D., Ahmed, A. M., & Huy, N. T. (2019). A step-by-step guide for conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis with simulation data. Tropical Medicine and Health, 47(1), 1-9.

Malkin, K. R., & Ravert, R. D. (2019). Health Care Communication Barriers Encountered by Child Life Specialists. Clinical Paediatrics, 58(10), 1128-1130.

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