LAUSR

None of us went into medicine to confuse people. Yet, studies on our use of jargon—the technical terminology of a given group—reveal that we consistently do precisely that. While healthcare providers overwhelmingly agree that using plain language is essential for effective communication, it has been shown that we use terminology not understood by our patients as often as seventy times per encounter [1–6]. Even more problematic is the fact that, despite this tendency to confuse, we rate ourselves highly in our ability to speak plainly with patients and consistently overestimate their ability to define the terms we use [3, 4, 7]. There are a number of reasons we may use jargon with our patients, ranging from an innocent misjudgment of patients’ level of understanding to a more pretentious desire to sound knowledgeable on a subject. We believe our jargon usage is likely the result of the progression through the developmental communication milestones inherent to our training. As we navigate through medical school, we start to learn another language—both the formal disease names and the informal shortcut slang. Under the guise of promoting efficiency and professionalism, we are encouraged to demonstrate our growing mastery of this language when we present our patients, discuss our plans, write our notes, and call consultants. Eventually, we may simply forget there was a time when we did not know the meaning of language we now use with ease. Medical English becomes our primary language and we forget our mother tongues. Clearly, it is not effective to tell providers to stop using jargon if we are not even aware we are using it in the first place.We introduce the term “jargon-oblivion” to describe this discrepancy between our self-rated skill in clear communication and our patients’ ability to understand the terms we use. In order to address this disconnect, we must first identify the problem. As a step toward doing so, we propose a classification system for common types of jargon in Table 1 and in detail below. This classification is based on a review of the literature and our work trying to eradicate inappropriate jargon from our own practice. Our goal is to provide a framework for medical professionals to use as a tool to diagnose and address the epidemic of iatrogenic confusion perpetuated by our jargon-oblivion.