Getting a "One-Up" on Medical Lingo

Our last class focused on the communication model and its components. As I have been reading, the two things that employers look for most when interviewing is if the potential person has strong communication and listening skills. I see communication as getting a message out to another form of public in an effective way. I was given two articles to read our first day of class and noticed that communication is important no matter where you are or what you are doing. Communication is what patient's are requesting most of their doctors, but find it hard to recieve information that is understandable. Doctors, on the other hand, are finding it hard to change their "language" in order to help make patients understand what they are talking about. For example, while briefly looking through articles online, I came across an article about women and their mammogram needs on the U.S. News and World Report website. The article continued to explain that most women who are actually in need of a mammogram do not get one because they simply did not know they needed one. Doctors feel as if they are doing all they can to tell women they need to get tested, and do not understand why women are not getting them.

This reminds me of times when even people I know feel a need to have to take a family member with them when going to the hospital to be almost like an interpretor in order to understand the "medical lingo." This, in my opinion, is sad because clarity is extremely important in these types of situations. Now that the tables have turned and patients are the ones questioning doctors about their credibility and knowledge of their particular situation/illness, doctors have to be more aware of interactive and dialogic communication with a patient instead of the patient being merely an active listener. This is happening in many areas dealing with health care. Even getting messages out to the public from a specific hospital, such as the mammorgram testing need, can promote the hospital's want to reach out to the community. Either way, if they do not reach out, patients can now learn all they need to know online, and will continue to look for the hospital that has the best communication, now that they have a "one-up" with the medical language.