Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Monday, June 3, 2013
That's a perfectly cromulent word!
I experience a little bit of a reentry phenomenon whenever interacting with nonmedical friends or family members. I spent the last four years learning to communicate in medicalese and surrounded by people who encouraged or even demanded that we stick to the proper clinical terms when discussing anything medical, even in the presence of patients.
Now I've gotten to the point where many of the terms I've been using have become so second nature that I use them in nonmedical settings or sometimes forget the 'mundane' terms, thus creating a great deal of confusion among friends, family and acquaintances who have not been trained this way.
For example: Using 'proximal', 'distal' or 'lateral' to refer to objects or places, and using terms such as anticoagulant, orthostatic hypotension, or endocrine that I find easy to say and understand but a layperson might not.
Now I've gotten to the point where many of the terms I've been using have become so second nature that I use them in nonmedical settings or sometimes forget the 'mundane' terms, thus creating a great deal of confusion among friends, family and acquaintances who have not been trained this way.
For example: Using 'proximal', 'distal' or 'lateral' to refer to objects or places, and using terms such as anticoagulant, orthostatic hypotension, or endocrine that I find easy to say and understand but a layperson might not.
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