No matter how good our medical skills maybe, the truth is that we often don’t understand what patients have to live through, because we’re not ill ourselves, says, Dr Aniruddha Malpani, Medical Director, HELP – Health Education Library for People
One of the commonest criticisms which patients have about doctors is that they use so much jargon that it’s very hard for patients to understand what they’re saying.
It’s true that some doctors find it hard to speak in plain language which is simple enough for patients to understand. We’re taught to use technical medical terms in our five years of medical college, and we’re so proud about the fact that we understand all these arcane, complicated terms that we tend to use them all the time to demonstrate our mastery of medicine. Since doctors talk mostly to other doctors most of the time, this works out well. However, we forget that patients don’t understand the terms we use, and often a lot of what we say goes about their heads. However, they are too scared to tell us that they haven’t understood, and we get fooled into thinking our communication skills our flawless! Sadly, some doctors even take pride in putting patients who have taken the time and trouble to do their homework on Dr Google in their place by using complex jargon.
This misuse of jargon results in poor patient compliance; and is one of the reasons patients don’t trust doctors as much as they used to – because they don’t understand what we are saying.
Now, it’s hard to unlearn some of these habits, but instead of studying only pathology, doctors need to study pathography as well. This may be an unfamiliar term for lots of doctors, but what it literally means is ” writing about disease”. A lot of this writing is done by expert patients, who’ve suffered from that illness themselves. This is a story which comes from the heart, because it’s something which the patient has lived through. Since it’s written for the intelligent layperson, it’s stripped of all jargon, and describes what the patient has experienced. It’s very valuable for doctors to read these books, because they give them a lot of insight into what a patient experiences, so that it teaches them to be empathetic.
Some examples of books in this genre include: A Taste of My Own Medicine: When the Doctor Is the Patient by Edward E. Rosenbaum; Intoxicated by My Illness by Anatole Broyard; and The Underachieving Ovary by JT Lawrence.
No matter how good our medical skills maybe, the truth is that we often don’t understand what patients have to live through, because we’re not ill ourselves. This detachment creates a gap between doctors and patients, and this is why sometimes compliance is so poor – we forget how hard it is for patients to actually translate the advice we give them in our clinics and apply this in their daily life.
A patient who has taken the time and trouble to write their story down shares what disease feels like through the patients’ eyes. It also helps us to understand that what patients think about doctors, hospitals, and the healthcare system, so that we can improve the services we provide.
These books are also a great source of analogies and metaphors we can use to explain complex medical concepts to our patients. Not only should doctors be reading these books, they should be prescribing them to their patients as well !