Читать книгу Confessions of a GP - Benjamin Daniels - Страница 12

At my secondary school I was known as Benny Big Nose. Not the most charming of nicknames, but nevertheless a beautifully simple and succinct summary of my name and most prominent facial feature. I sometimes wish medicine could be as straightforward. Why do we use long-winded medical jargon to describe something rather simple?

Purulent nasal discharge – snot; viral upper respiratory tract infection – a cold; infective gastroenteritis – the shits; strong urinary odour – stinks of piss.

One reason for medical jargon is so that we doctors can write something in the notes that if the patient were to read, they wouldn’t take offence and complain. There was a time a few years back when patients had no right at all to see their own medical notes. I was recently looking through the old paper notes of one retired farmer and the sole entry for 1973 was ‘Patient smells of pig shit.’ How beautifully jargon free.

When I first qualified, I loved all the medical jargon. I felt that it made us sound clever and elite and I got off on the fact that I could have a chat with a fellow medic on the train. However, it only takes an interaction with someone who uses jargon that you don’t understand to realise how annoying it can be. Current letters from our managers at the PCT (Primary Care Trust) have just this effect on me. What do phrases like ‘performance-based target strategies’ and ‘competence managed commissioning’ mean. They certainly don’t seem to bear any relevance to my daily routine of listening to people’s health grumbles and trying to make them feel a bit better.

Patients are always happiest if you skip the jargon and say it how it is. I find that replacing the phrase ‘stage-four renal impairment’ with ‘knackered kidneys’ or ‘mitotic growth’ with ‘cancer’ is generally appreciated. We all like to have things explained in terms we can understand and I just wish that NHS managers would write me letters in a language that I could comprehend.

It was Darren Mills who first named me Benny Big Nose. The last I heard, he was spending some well-deserved time at Her Majesty’s pleasure. His straightforward and direct manner seemed to get him in trouble from the teachers and later the police. However, Darren, if you’re out there, I’d like to say thank you for teaching me the valuable lesson of saying it how it is. You usually don’t cause as much offence as you think you might and most people will appreciate your honesty.