The Perils Of Doctor Talk

 

There’s software for this?

Well, now. How nice to see that the Wall Street Journal agrees with me.
In today’s edition of the “Personal Journal” section of the venerated WSJ is an article titled, “Taking Medical Jargon Out of Doctors’ Visits.”

The writer of the article appearing on page D-1 reports that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, “nearly nine out of 10 adults have difficulty following routine medical advice largely because it often incomprehensible to average people.”

In response, a new federal program is aimed at improving medical literacy. The article also reports that “more than two-thirds of state Medicaid agencies call for health material to be written at a reading level of between the fourth and sixth grades.”

Most incredibly, several companies have developed computer software to interpret doctor talk into ordinary English.

Blaming the customer-messenger

Here’s a radical opinion on this effort: It isn’t the patients’ fault. In fact, the implication here is that communicating on the fourth-grade level is a bad thing. It isn’t; it’s a hard thing.

Have you ever tried to answer a child’s question, “Why don’t buildings fall down?” Or “What makes a car work?” Or best yet, “Who is God?”

As Mark Twain once said, “We’re all ignorant, only on different topics.” Neither the inexperienced child nor the medically naive adult is at fault for lack of knowledge. For this reason, age and educational levels aren’t always the problem. And explaining complicated medical forces to humans who are experts in other areas isn’t a burden of practicing medicine; it’s a job requirement.

Fortunately, the Internet lets us all become less ignorant, both teachers and pupils alike.