Most patients enter a doctor's office or hospital as if it were a Mayan temple, representing an ancient and mysterious culture with no language in common with the visitor.
La me decine a fait quelques petits progre' s dans ses connaissances depuis Molie' re, mais aucun dans son vocabulaire. Medicine has made a few, small advances in knowledge since Molie' r e, but none in its vocabulary.
As a physician and as a pilot, I think it lets me be a pretty good translator having one foot in the medical world and one foot in the flying world. Sometimes when the medical guys come in and speak medical stuff to the pilots, the pilots really don't know what they're saying.
The most important words in the English language are not 'I love you' but 'it's benign.'
Many people are intimidated by doctors. ... People also feel stupid when they don't understand what a doctor's talking about the first time around, so they don't ask again. And let's be honest here, people. English is not a doctor's first language.
It's very intimidating looking at the script and realizing that you have to say medical jargon as if you've said them a million times before, and they're just a part of your vocabulary. But that's what preparing is for, and you can't just really wing it. You've got to really know what you're doing.
I was labeled 'P-E-A,' which is patient expired on arrival. I guess that's the politically correct way of saying you didn't make it.
The doctors must tell you that one of the risks of surgery is that you might die. This poor doctor was talking to an actress. It was very dramatic to me. To him, it was just a thing he had to say.
No," I replied testily. "I'm pretty sure 'digital' is Latin for 'fingeral,' so finger cancer equals digital cancer. This is all basic anatomy, Dr. Roland." The Dr. Roland told me that he thought I was overreacting, and the "fingeral" wasn't even a real word. Then I told him that I though he was underreacting, probably because he's embarrassed that he doesn't know how Latin works. Then he claimed that "underrecating" isn't a word either. The man has a terrible bedside manner.
Mark Twain didn't psychoanalyze Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Dickens didn't put Oliver Twist on the couch because he was hungry! Good copy comes out of people, Johnny, not out of a lot of explanatory medical terms.
I would not be able to retain all the information, all the medical jargon these doctors do. I'm not really intelligent enough is what I'm saying.
His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.
It's these parallel universes when someone you love is sick. Your world is this completely foreign place involving radiation and tumor markers. Outside, people are buying sweaters.
Most people assume that physician language is akin to technical, non-understandable jargon. It does not have to be that way. Doctors do not perform witchcraft. They simply interpret what they are told and what tests reveal. They diagnose and prescribe treatment. Our responsibility is to help doctors know what is going on in our bodies and to insist on clear, precise, understandable language in response.
In medical school, you're taught to write in this convoluted, Latinate way. I knew the vocabulary as well as anyone, but I would write kidney instead of nephric. I insisted on using English.
The doctor looked at my cardiogram and made that "hmmmm" noise that doctors are taught in medical school so they won't come right out and say "UH-oh!"
'Cardiac Arrest' was the first British drama to use a lot of medical jargon. 'ER' began the following year and was the first American drama to do that.
We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.
It's been great, I have to dig deep for really raw emotions and at the same time I have to use my intellect to say the ridiculous medical jargon while acting and treating a patient and then I have to try to have a personality and emotions as well. So it is definitely hard work.
It's really hard for me to memorize the medical jargon if I don't know the meaning of every single word. So I do have to do a little Wikipedia/YouTube research to figure out what I'm talking about.
He was a patient with a diagnosis that he couldn't understand.
And he was like "The sedative in the blood, blah, blah, four hours, blah, blah, nerdspeak, geektalk -" -Abby
Don't you loathe it when doctors use the word 'we' when it applies only and solely to yourself?
Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to the intellectual expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-medical jargon that parodies the concepts of science. The social style conforms to the political expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-liberal social movement that parodies the ideals of freedom and rationality.
Confuse was the nurses' word for abuse.
