That’s my problem with that kind of thinking. EVERYTHING in regard to the patient should be accessible to the patient and “directed towards” the patient.
Yes, this is really the first time I’ve encountered it (at least, that I’ve noticed), and so far I’ve only seen it used in medical professions. Prior to now I’ve always seen “w/” and “w/o.”
What, did you think I was lying? :dubious:
this is the first time I have ever heard of either abbreviation. But I am not in the medical field.
My guess would have been, (and I now find support in the linked dictionary entry), that “cum” replaced “come” in pretty much the same way that “luv” replaced “love” in the same time period–simply a “cute” affectation relying on the fact that the spellings using “u” were (if the final e was dropped to prevent lengthening the sounded vowel) homophones to the actual words in most dialects of English. Luv eventually died off (for the most part) as it passed out of fashion, but cum has hung on because it became almost jargon in the sense of being limited to a particular literary genre. No Goth, Valley Girl, metalhead, Gen-Xer, Gen-Yer, millennial, l33t speaker or whoever would be caught using such an archaic expression as luv, but the porn industry has adopted cum and made it their own.
Do you expect your airline pilot’s communications with other aviation professionals during your flight to be directed at you in language that you can understand, too?
I’ll do my best to answer all my patient’s questions, and make sure that the patient has the info to make their final say in treatment options, etc. But I still need to communicate effectively and efficiently with other pedical professionals to render optimal medical care. And the best way for that is to use technical language that others will not readlily understand.
My notes will say things like “the patient had a past Nissen Fundoplication for severe GERD”, not “the patient had a past surgical procedure whch tightened the valve between the food tube that goes from the mouth to the stomach and the stomach itself by means of cutting parts of the valve muscles and sewing parts of the stomach around it like a tight collar or girdle, due to bad problems with acid from the stomach backing up into the food tube that goes from the mouth to stomach”.
Do you apply the same thinking to other professions, though? Airline pilots? Lawyers?
Edit: that’s what I get for not reading further down the thread. Someone beat me to the point. :smack:
I’ve got the opposite problem. I’m tired of my doctor talking down to me. And my dentist.
My doctor does the same thing, and I’m about 4 months away from having my own doctor of pharmacy finished. And he knows (or at least, I’ve told him) that too. :rolleyes:
I’ve had doctors talk to me in doctor-speak expecting that I would understand. Not in a deliberately obfuscating way, they just assume that I would “get it”. I guess I look smart that way, but I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.
Unfortunately, it’s very easy to go off into error by assuming that people will know what you’re talking about without explicitly stating things. I can see where a doctor would get used to “talking down” at people as being the least likely to cause him/her problems later on with that patient or that patient’s family.
With my father’s recent neurological problems, my father, mother and I were all following the neurosurgeon’s descriptions of what was going on, but our reports to my sister, who is a very smart woman, just not all that interested in ‘icky’ stuff, which were pretty much what the doctors had said, assumed that she would understand that if the brain is being pushed out of shape by fluid build up, to the point where it were affecting vision - this is brain damage, and the prospects for quick correction of the condition are pretty poor. And at that, the best we can do is simply wait and hope that the brain’s own adaptive functions will rework the vision center around the damage.
I do believe my sister has a better than average understanding of physiology, and medicine, but none of us passing status reports and prognoses to her about this realized what her expectations were until she finally asked, “When are they going to fix his vision?”
Anywhere near Pratt’s Bottom?
No, but that’s not such a good analogy. The pilot’s job is to get the plane and all the passengers safely to a destination. My doctor’s job, on the other hand is specifically to assist in my health care. As you will note I said I have a problem with the kind of thinking that mandates deliberate obfuscation.
Anyone who does the least bit of research isn’t going to be confused by the phrase “the patient had a past Nissen Fundoplication [sic] for severe GERD”, and your implication that I require doctors to talk down to me is a bit offensive.
I have seen so many examples of medical doublespeak masking plain English and getting in the way of direct communication, and I just know you have too.
I am as opposed to deliberate obfuscation as you are, and am a strong believer in keeping nothing from the patient.
But technical language and scientific shorthand are not the problem. People are. Attacking technical language will not accomplish the goal of improving honest communication.
Also, I hardly consider my description of the problem in plain english to be ‘talking down’. Given my patient population, that is the sort of language I often need to use to effectively communicate.
Not far from Little Peover
Please justify the use of “[sic]” in your post.
Then what’s the problem? Anyone who is going to the least bit of research also isn’t going to be confused by medical abbreviations.
Not “EVERYTHING in regard to the patient” should be “directed towards the patient” as you claim. When I was an x-ray tech, I was given written orders for procedures and images that a non-medical, and sometimes non-radiological, person wouldn’t understand. There’s no reason these orders should be written in non-medical speak for your convenience.
Can you give an example of when deliberate obfuscation is used by medical personnel?
Well, it’s just funnier this way. Fundoplication!
Sometimes I admit to not telling the whole story to a patient. Sometimes because I don’t know, sometimes because I want to have all the details ironed out before I tell them, sometimes because it isn’t the right time to answer that question and I’d rather wait until we have some privacy and they have someone with them for support.
For example, yesterday I was having a 3 way conversation with the cardiothoracic surgeons and the oncolgists about a patient with oesophageal cancer. We all concluded that he was now palliative and not for stenting of the tumour, merely dilation in order to help him swallow, and the CT team were willing to do that only after they had reviewed his CAT scan and gastrograffin meal.
That is not, however, what I told him.
I told him that the cancer doctors and the chest and throat surgeons were still deciding what they could do to help his swallowing and when they had decided on a plan he would be the first to know.
If he had asked me whether the plan was for aggressive treatment or palliation, I would have told him the truth, but he asked me specifically what we were doing to help his swallow and that is the answer I gave him.
Just for jollies, could you share what your medical-speak notes looked like for the bagel-dog penis guy?
Probably something like “S: pt states 3 yrs ago had penile shaft injected c unknown substance by practitioner of dubious credentials to ^ size. Since then, c/o pain c erections only, decreased sensations. Can void urine s problems, no d/c or hx infections. Would like substance removed, nl appearance restored. O: skin of penile shaft diffusely enlarged along entire length, from below glans to mons, c sl pitting on compression, s urethral obst, s skin breakdown, erythema, or d/c. T B desc, s hernias or ing nodes. A & P: s/p cosmetic penile enhancement surgery, no indications for intervention @ present. Pt educ re reconstructive urologist, elective procedure, p d/c from inst. f/u prn.”
Notes tend to be fact-based. My fuller thinking was delineated in my thread on the topic: My patient’s bizarre penis