The core of the scientific process is how we ultimately serve our patients

A few weekends ago, I saw a patient with bloated shins at our school’s free clinic, and I marked in my notes that she exhibited “peripheral edema,” an esoteric phrase that means little to those outside of the medical community. That experience only highlighted the tendency in medicine to inflate common bodily functions into opaque medical jargon. Its use can be frustrating for patients who are trying to understand their illness — and at times even for the uninformed medical student who is trying to learn about his patient. It doesn’t help that the list of jargon is endless. Itchiness becomes pruritus. Listening to the body’s internal noises condenses into auscultation. When you urinate, you’re really micturating, and if you have trouble doing so, you also have dysuria. Having a rash turns into having erythema. An abnormally large liver translates to hepatomegaly. An unhealthy level of cholesterol is labeled as hyperlipidemia. Chest pain is referred to as angina. Even the simple act of sweating is termed hidrosis. For vast majority of the first two years of medical school, we spend our time learning this vast and complex language that seems to have a word or phrase for every single bodily event — health and unhealthy, normal and abnormal. But that is what medical training and much of medicine are — making observations of the human body and noting them with memorized jargon. And once we have acknowledged all the relevant observations, we connect the do...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Education Medical school Source Type: blogs