Understanding Doc Talk
Doctors are highly educated people, having completed four years of college, four years of medical school, and sometimes advanced training for a specialty. Of course, this is a good characteristic because we want highly educated people to be making diagnoses and suggesting treatments.
The challenging part of this is that doctors frequently use “doctor talk” in such a way that patients may have difficulty understanding what the docs are talking about. Further, while they may not mean to do so, doctors can have a different attitude about patients who understand doc talk versus those who don’t. If you can learn the lingo, you can communicate better with your doctor and also earn the respect of your doctor.
Medical vocabulary is derived from Greek and Latin, but before you panic, there are some patterns to it. Once you learn the basic ideas, you will be able to pick up the details.
First of all there are words that refer to body parts. For example, “derm” is skin, “hep” refers to liver, and “patella” is your kneecap. Secondly, there are words that refer to location such as “proximal” or “distal.” Location words are always relative; “proximal” means close, so you have to wonder “close to what” and include that information. Then there are the words that refer to disease processes. For example, the suffix, “-itis” refers to inflammation. So, dermatitis is inflammation of the skin and appendicitis is inflammation of the appendix. There are also words that refer to types of procedures. “-Ectomy” refers to the removal of something. An appendectomy is the removal of the appendix while a tonsillectomy is the removal of the tonsils. And, there are words that refer to understanding the disease (-ology) and the people who deal with that disease or part of the body (-ologist).
In order to learn these things search for “Latin and Greek roots medical terminology.” You may also want to search for information about your specific medical concerns and pay attention to the terminology related to them. Look up those words, making sure you understand how the different parts of each term, including those that refer to anatomy, relative location, disease processes, and procedures.
When you speak with your doctor, be sure you use the words correctly. If your doctor uses technical terms, you can always ask, “does that mean…?” rather than you using the terms incorrectly.
Part of getting good patient care resides in understanding exactly what the doctors are saying about the disease or condition and potential treatments. Another part involves gaining the doctors’ respect by demonstrating your understanding of the vocabulary and using it correctly yourself. By doing so, you become a little more of a peer than a patient. It is worth the time to explore these specialty words and to work on learning the proper vocabulary, particularly since the internet has so many good resources for doing so.