Wow, this is fascinating! It sounds like medical abbreviations should be the next phase of standardization and simplification (along the lines of, say, making all the controls on all the anesthesia machines the same) to avoid errors. Incidentally, my BIL is a pediatric ER doc, and they have an abbreviation that cracks me up: FLK, for funny-looking kid. They use it for a kid who comes into the ER, and there is nothing obviously wrong, but the kid looks off somehow, and so the doctors assume something is wrong and they need to find out what it is.
Btw, if you are like me, before you know it, Spanish will be your default foreign language, and when you’re casting about for a German word, a Spanish one will pop up. Or at least that’s what happened to me with Czech and German!
Acronyms are really interesting and can mean different things in different industries. My husband, an airport engineer, often referred to PIDs, perimeter intrusion detection. To me, as a nurse who had worked in women's health, it meant pelvic inflammatory disease.
I really enjoyed this posting, Theresa. I went to medical school in Italy, where all the classes were in Italian, and all the exams (except two) were oral presentations delivered to a panel of professors. Our student organization gave a crash course in the language, but what really worked was living the language daily, plus my high school Latin and French courses. After I graduated and returned to the States for my residency and subsequent practice, I used the Italian as a springboard to teaching myself rudimentary Spanish, although it is still remains very much "clinic Spanish"...plus what I hope are pleasant daytime and evening greetings!
Your point about medical language is so spot on, to the point where I believe high school health teachers and adult education centers should present lessons in how to communicate with the healthcare system. I have even fantasized about doing a TED talk myself on this topic, because I truly feel that patients need to be educated in this area so they feel empowered to both understand their own bodies and then have the ability to engage in shared decision making. And you don't have to bore people, or put them to sleep, or overwhelm them with detail; you can make it entertaining, and use humor when appropriate. In 1967, Reader's Digest began publishing a series of articles entitled "Your Body and How It Works", later made available in book form (I have a copy in my library) as "I Am Joe's Body"; included were also chapters specifically pertinent to Joe's wife Jane. While some of the information could benefit from updating based on new clinical knowledge, that book could be required reading for everybody; think of it as a kind of "owner's manual" for people...
Any interest in going in on a joint project of creating a universal patient education tool?
Wow, this is fascinating! It sounds like medical abbreviations should be the next phase of standardization and simplification (along the lines of, say, making all the controls on all the anesthesia machines the same) to avoid errors. Incidentally, my BIL is a pediatric ER doc, and they have an abbreviation that cracks me up: FLK, for funny-looking kid. They use it for a kid who comes into the ER, and there is nothing obviously wrong, but the kid looks off somehow, and so the doctors assume something is wrong and they need to find out what it is.
Btw, if you are like me, before you know it, Spanish will be your default foreign language, and when you’re casting about for a German word, a Spanish one will pop up. Or at least that’s what happened to me with Czech and German!
Acronyms are really interesting and can mean different things in different industries. My husband, an airport engineer, often referred to PIDs, perimeter intrusion detection. To me, as a nurse who had worked in women's health, it meant pelvic inflammatory disease.
I really enjoyed this posting, Theresa. I went to medical school in Italy, where all the classes were in Italian, and all the exams (except two) were oral presentations delivered to a panel of professors. Our student organization gave a crash course in the language, but what really worked was living the language daily, plus my high school Latin and French courses. After I graduated and returned to the States for my residency and subsequent practice, I used the Italian as a springboard to teaching myself rudimentary Spanish, although it is still remains very much "clinic Spanish"...plus what I hope are pleasant daytime and evening greetings!
Your point about medical language is so spot on, to the point where I believe high school health teachers and adult education centers should present lessons in how to communicate with the healthcare system. I have even fantasized about doing a TED talk myself on this topic, because I truly feel that patients need to be educated in this area so they feel empowered to both understand their own bodies and then have the ability to engage in shared decision making. And you don't have to bore people, or put them to sleep, or overwhelm them with detail; you can make it entertaining, and use humor when appropriate. In 1967, Reader's Digest began publishing a series of articles entitled "Your Body and How It Works", later made available in book form (I have a copy in my library) as "I Am Joe's Body"; included were also chapters specifically pertinent to Joe's wife Jane. While some of the information could benefit from updating based on new clinical knowledge, that book could be required reading for everybody; think of it as a kind of "owner's manual" for people...
Any interest in going in on a joint project of creating a universal patient education tool?