Some common medical terms may be more confusing than doctors think - Science News Magazine

Medical connection tin sometimes stump patients. And immoderate communal sayings are straight-up head-scratchers.

Calling a patient’s neurological exam “grossly intact,” for example, mightiness not dependable truthful great, says Michael Pitt, a pediatrician astatine the University of Minnesota Medical School successful Minneapolis. But it really means that everything is mean and moving arsenic expected.

In 2021, Pitt and his colleagues asked 215 adults astatine the Minnesota State Fair to decipher that connection and 12 different aesculapian sayings a diligent mightiness perceive from a doc oregon work successful their notes. People tin travel up connected acquainted words and phrases that person 1 meaning successful mundane English and an wholly antithetic meaning successful medicine, the researchers study November 30 successful JAMA Network Open.

Only astir 20 percent of radical surveyed, for example, understood what it meant erstwhile their doc said, “The findings connected the X-ray were rather impressive.” In plain language, that means the doc is giving you atrocious news, Pitt says — the other of what immoderate patients mightiness expect.

When surveyed, doctors overwhelmingly hold that they should debar aesculapian jargon erstwhile speaking with patients, Pitt says. But galore don’t adjacent cognize they’re doing it. There’s a method word for this too, Pitt adds: “jargon oblivion.”

He’s hoping his team’s results springiness doctors an “aha moment” and immoderate consciousness astir phrases that mightiness beryllium puzzling patients. If a doc says thing that’s unclear, Pitt says, helium wants patients to consciousness empowered to talk up.

He’s coached his household for years connected this. When they spell to the doctor, there’s 1 question successful peculiar helium wants them to ask. Before they permission an appointment, they’ll summarize what the doc has said and ask, “Am I getting this right?”

“That benignant of operation is astonishing to person successful your backmost pocket,” Pitt says.