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Health care professionals tend to use medical terminology, jargon, abbreviations, and even specific workplace slang. In general, this communication feature makes the daily interactions between nurses and physicians more transparent and efficient, resulting in fewer mistakes and overall better care provided. Medical English replaces some ordinary words with specific terms and abbreviations, making it more comprehensible for caregivers and, on the contrary, less understandable for patients. To gain insight into medical terms’ usefulness in practice, I conducted an interview with a fourth-year resident in the USA named Emma. The respondent received questions connected with medical terms used in health care settings.
To begin with, the majority of physicians and nurses apply a specific language of medicine on a daily basis. Education and workplace culture encourages care providers to modify their language making it more standardized. According to Emma, the most common medical terms heard during day-to-day job duties are connected with diagnosis, quality of patient’s condition, and drug orders. For instance, the terms rhinorrhea, anorexia, syncope, vertigo substitute more common running nose, absence of appetite, fainting, and dizziness.
Doctors also introduce abbreviations such as Ac (before meals), BP (blood pressure), cc (cubic centimeter), especially in written prescriptions to make long terms shorter. Moreover, practitioners tend to create and apply slang terms while communicating with each other to relieve stress. For instance, NPS (new parent syndrome) is code nurses use to describe new parents who often bring their children to the hospital without significant reason. Physicians are those responsible for writing the majority of prescriptions containing shortened forms of clinical terms.
One common prescribing mistake observed by the responder is a QD (once-a-day) mistaken for QID (four times a day). Such misunderstanding among caregivers endangers a patient’s health who receives a four-time higher dose of medication per day (Tariq & Sharma, 2020). Communication with patients who are not familiar with a majority of medical terms constitutes another challenge. For example, when asking history-eliciting questions or explaining the diagnosis, doctors often introduce medical terms for specific conditions, while patients tend to hide their lack of understanding. Such situations may result in an incorrect diagnosis or improper treatment regimen.
The respondent revealed that it is essential for the caregiver to use simple words where it is possible when having an appointment. The yes/no questions should also be limited to avoid patience giving incorrect information. Instead, the latter should receive an explanation of some terms (conditions) and be encouraged to tell their own story in their own words for crucial insights. Another solution can be a distribution of specific terms glossary designed to foster physician-patient communication.
The last raised question was regarding ways to become a competent and successful health care professional. According to Emma, if someone wants to become an asset in the organization, he/she should continuously foster clinical skills, update knowledge, and improve the quality of team/unit communication. The health care professional requires a lifelong studying/training, an ongoing update on evidence-based practices, and promotion of higher care quality for patients.
In the context of medical English, new caregivers should learn the list of appropriate and banned abbreviations in the hospital and familiarize all terms frequently used by their colleagues. Today, the application of abbreviations in patient-related documents is not recommended to avoid guessing and possible mistakes when deciphering it. To improve communication, nurses and physicians should close the gaps in their knowledge, being brave enough to ask for clarification or double-check the history or drug order. A teach-back method is the best choice to utilize while communicating information to patients.
Reference
Tariq, R. A., & Sharma, S. (2020). Inappropriate medical abbreviations. StatPearls [Internet].
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