Category: Linguistics in Healthcare
Language and communication issues among healthcare professionals and between healthcare professionals and patients
On Wearing a White Coat
The interns nowadays at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) wear short white coats with short sleeves. When we were interns, the only thing distinguishing us from the rest of the medical students was a red nameplate; the other students had white nameplates pinned to the all-white uniform that was common to first- to fifth-year medical […]
60. Escorting chemo brain out of the building
I participated in bedside rounds with the residents and a rotating medical student today. One of our residents was using medical-ese to explain to a patient’s mother why her son needed a urinalysis. Recognizing this, I spoke to the mom in simpler, more understandable words (yes I talked to the resident about this after rounds… […]
Communication and its Importance in Rehabilitation, Part 2
In the last blog post, we tackled communication’s importance in a patient’s active participation in rehabilitation and adjusting to their “new normal” after a life-changing event. The rehabilitation team’s patient-centered care involves communicating information in a timely manner, promoting a supportive environment and building good relationships with the patient and family and delivering both bad […]
Communication and its Importance in Rehabilitation, Part 1
A recent blog post tackled the importance of communication in healthcare, and how good communication can lead to better patient outcomes, safety and population health. I also wrote about how I enjoyed a course on healthcare communication in my last semester of school. One of the required assessments for the course was a final research […]
Communication in Healthcare
I’ve been interested in language and linguistics since I was a teenager, probably stemming from a trip to Europe when I was fourteen and seeing how words in different languages were similar to and different from each other. I’ve also purchased and read too many books on the history and evolution of the English language. […]
Reports of COVID-19 Vaccine Safety in Norway: Some Titles Could Have Been Written Better
News reports about 29 frail elderly people dying after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination in Norway were an exercise in critical reading. Some of them were especially scary if one saw the news item titles alone, without clicking through to the article and reading the actual accompanying text. Yes. The headlines can look scary and […]
Pandemic Messaging: Words Matter
I read an article a few days ago about how using certain words can get messages about the pandemic more effectively than others. You can read the article from Axios here. It shows striking contrasts between “words used” and “words we should have used”. The “actors” in this study are the people giving the messages, […]
