Part 2: They speak two languages: Medical jargon and layman’s terms

Two Languages

Did you know that nurses speak two languages? They speak plain, everyday language and medicalese.

Medicine, with its complexities, has developed a language to easily describe treatments, conditions, and activities. These are necessary to quickly, and clearly, convey information between healthcare practitioners. While helpful for them to provide accurate and prompt care, it’s not so helpful for non-healthcare practitioners.

There are memes that circle the internet where a long list of medical terms and abbreviations are given. The reader is then asked if they can understand the words. They often look like this:

93M, from ED, PMH CHF, PMD, DMII, AFIB, MI, MRSA, VRE. Needs PICC, RBKA, CXR, CMP, CBC, T&C.

While medical professionals look at this list of strange abbreviations and understand it, anyone outside of the medical profession quickly becomes confused. Even some medical professionals may need clarification since abbreviations are not as standardized as we would like.

Patient Education

One part of a nurse’s role is patient education. We are trained for this in nursing school and continue to hone our skills as we work. The first part of educating someone always includes finding out how much the patient already knows and explaining the medical jargon surrounding their diagnosis.

If a patient does not understand what is going on, they cannot make wise decisions about their care. The use of too many medical terms can confuse those not trained to understand them. This keeps the patient from making wise decisions and can lead to many adverse effects, including – noncompliance with treatment and undergoing unwanted treatments.

A nurse is trained to locate gaps in a patient’s understanding of what is going on with their body and what pathways to improving their health exist. A nurse defines medical jargon and allows a patient time to ask questions for their understanding. Often a doctor will talk with a patient, who then asks their nurse to interpret what the doctor said.

Healthcare’s speed of change does not give nurses time to move from one language to the next slowly. They need to be able to speak with another healthcare practitioner in medical terms, turn immediately to a patient to speak in layman’s terms, and often turn back around to using medical terms with another healthcare professional. Switching between the two quickly is an important skill nurses pick up quickly.

With the amount of time spent translating between these two languages, nurses have learned the best layman’s terms to use. They also know when images are needed to help further understanding. Nurses also know how to speak with a patient who does not want to hear all the gory details but need to know enough to be wise in their choices.

Nurse Writers

With their skills in understanding medical jargon and ease of translating that jargon into terms anyone can understand, nurses make the best healthcare writers.

When you need to convey information in writing to healthcare professionals, you want to hire a writer who knows medical terminology and abbreviations. You need someone who has fluency and sounds like they know what they are talking about. Hire a nurse to do the writing for you. Their years of experience working in healthcare and talking with other healthcare professionals gives them insight you don’t even know you need to convey your information clearly and concisely.

When you desire to provide healthcare information that anyone can access, you need someone who understands medical jargon and can translate it into everyday terms. You want someone who knows the best everyday terms to use to maintain medical accuracy. Hire a nurse to do the writing for you. Their years of experience translating for patients provide them insights you need.

Hire The Nurse Writer

Nurses have the education and experience needed. Not only are they the most trusted professionals, which will make your site more trustworthy, but they are excellent communicators. They will meet, and even surpass your expectations for excellent healthcare content.

When you are looking for someone to write healthcare content for your site, you want the best. You want someone who knows both the lingo and how to interpret that for the general public. The best thing to do is to hire a nurse.

Look for part 3 on Why to Hire a Nurse Writer in my next blog.

Read part 1 of Why Hire a Nurse Writer.