Patient Educ Couns. 2014 Jan 30. pii: S0738-3991(14)00049-4. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2014.01.014. [Epub ahead of print]
- 1Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA. Electronic address: thomas.leblanc@duke.edu.
- 2Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, East Lansing, MI, USA.
- 3The Pediatric Advanced Care Team, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
- 4Center for Ethics and Department of Medicine, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, East Lansing, MI, USA.
- 5Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
With
increasing exposure, medical students may forget that technical jargon
is unfamiliar to laypeople. To investigate this possibility, authors
assessed student perceptions of patient understanding across different
years in medical school.
METHODS:
533 students at 4 U.S.
medical schools rated the proportion of patients likely to understand
each of twenty-one different jargon terms. Students were either in the
first month of their first year, the middle of their first year, or the
middle of their fourth year of medical school.
RESULTS:
Fourth-year
students were slightly more pessimistic about patients' understanding
compared to new first-year students (mean percent understanding of 55.1%
vs. 58.6%, p=0.004). Students both over- and under-estimated patient
understanding of specific words compared to published estimates. In a
multivariate model, other factors did not explain these differences.
CONCLUSION:
Students
do not generally presume that patients understand medical jargon. In
many cases they actually underestimate patients' understanding, and
these estimates may become more pessimistic longitudinally. Jargon use
in communication with patients does not appear to stem from unrealistic
presumptions about patients' understanding or from desensitization to
jargon during medical school.
PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS:
Training about patient knowledge of medical jargon may be a useful addition to communication skills curricula.
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