Resident here. Excellent article, thank you. I'm finding that much of what makes an effective doctor "effective" is their ability to translate medicalese into plain English. Thankfully, like many skills, this can be learned... albeit with healthy doses of time and experience.
Tyler, thank you! Absolutely! It’s such an obscure language that honestly, I sometimes struggle to understand other specialties. Oncology continues to be a mystery; and I can’t pronounce the names of the drugs. Sounds like you’re on the path to being one of the greats. Keep it up young Jedi!
Thank you for this, it's so timely and thoughtful. It's something I've been contemplating as I take elderly parents to doctors appointments (today, in fact) and as I age myself. There comes a point in life, when more tests, procedures, and appointments are simply a waste of precious time.
My Primary Care Physician (PCM) handed me lab results and mumbled a few words. I looked at him and said, "If I gave you a Naval Aviation Training Operational Procedures Manual (NATOPS), and you read the introduction, could you fly the aircraft?" He said, "No!" I said, "Then I don't know what the heck you're talking about." Communications improved.
Simple solution to getting a appointment with a doctor: Walk through the door. We've walked through the door and gotten appointments within 2-3 days vs. calling on the phone, and sometimes within 15 minutes due to a cancellation. Try it. Lowers the frustration level by a bunch.
This article was so insightful . You are just the kind of physician that I liked to work alongside side of.
When I was employed as a bedside nurse in PICU, I would always sit down with the family after their doc came in to make rounds and update them.
I would help them unpack what the intensivist had told them and translate it into civilian language, taking great care not to talk down to them. It was one of my favorite parts of being a bedside RN. The parents were always so grateful for that extra bit of time. Often I would coach them before rounds, so that they would feel empowered to ask the difficult questions that didn’t always get brought up.
My youngest sister has Stage four metastatic cancer. Up until the time she decided to stop all treatment a few weeks ago, I was literally on every single phone call remotely with every single practitioner that she had an appointment with. I would take copious notes, organize them into civilian language, do some reading and research about what was said and then email the notes to her. She was very generous in letting me ask questions at the end of the appointment, and often they were questions she and her husband never would have thought of. I often put things that the oncologist or surgeon said in quotation marks, particularly if it was disturbing news. She said my note-taking made it so much better for her since she could just listen at the appointment and not have to worry about taking notes and trying to understand everything at once.
It also helped me because I could go into nurse mode and not have to think about the sister part until later that day. (I am getting help for that part).🥲
I’m retired from healthcare, and I find it a blessing and a curse all in one to age and know what I know or to recall the things I’ve seen over the years. Partly we have to know when to fold. Yes, a lot can be treated, but at what cost. Not in the sense of financial cost, but time, pain, and anxiety to live a little longer but with no better life.
Thank you for the message of "let's speak clearly, listen fully, and understand the lives before us."
As caretaker for both elders and a young person (with significant disability from health issues like Long COVID that is both misunderstood by the medical system and historically under researched by science) this hit home. Some don't want to know yet others desperately do.
I have most appreciated the doctors that have listened and explained things clearly with humility, ("We know that the immune system in some people continues to overreact after an infection but we don't know why")
Having seen both sides and spent a lot of time in medical settings, I would still choose to have clarity at least on what they think is going wrong. We still have so much to learn about our bodies and medicine.
Once again, an excellent article and thought-provoking topic. The line I always use is how much you’re willing to give up now in hopes that down the road you’ll gain a few days of additional life.
With the elderly, where does the line come between what medicine can do for a patient and what medicine cannot do. As you noted so well, your patient had no way to take advantage of the medical treatment unless the social issues preventing getting the care were resolved. Issues even beyond the reach of social workers. As the use of technology increases in the practice of medicine, at what point does the technology simply become a barrier to patient care. Primary care physicians used to be able to help patients tread this path, alas.
Resident here. Excellent article, thank you. I'm finding that much of what makes an effective doctor "effective" is their ability to translate medicalese into plain English. Thankfully, like many skills, this can be learned... albeit with healthy doses of time and experience.
Tyler, thank you! Absolutely! It’s such an obscure language that honestly, I sometimes struggle to understand other specialties. Oncology continues to be a mystery; and I can’t pronounce the names of the drugs. Sounds like you’re on the path to being one of the greats. Keep it up young Jedi!
https://edwinleap.substack.com/p/medical-language-and-other-barriers
Thank you for this, it's so timely and thoughtful. It's something I've been contemplating as I take elderly parents to doctors appointments (today, in fact) and as I age myself. There comes a point in life, when more tests, procedures, and appointments are simply a waste of precious time.
My Primary Care Physician (PCM) handed me lab results and mumbled a few words. I looked at him and said, "If I gave you a Naval Aviation Training Operational Procedures Manual (NATOPS), and you read the introduction, could you fly the aircraft?" He said, "No!" I said, "Then I don't know what the heck you're talking about." Communications improved.
Living in big cities may not be any better. Getting a doctor's appointment is sometimes difficult.
Simple solution to getting a appointment with a doctor: Walk through the door. We've walked through the door and gotten appointments within 2-3 days vs. calling on the phone, and sometimes within 15 minutes due to a cancellation. Try it. Lowers the frustration level by a bunch.
This article was so insightful . You are just the kind of physician that I liked to work alongside side of.
When I was employed as a bedside nurse in PICU, I would always sit down with the family after their doc came in to make rounds and update them.
I would help them unpack what the intensivist had told them and translate it into civilian language, taking great care not to talk down to them. It was one of my favorite parts of being a bedside RN. The parents were always so grateful for that extra bit of time. Often I would coach them before rounds, so that they would feel empowered to ask the difficult questions that didn’t always get brought up.
My youngest sister has Stage four metastatic cancer. Up until the time she decided to stop all treatment a few weeks ago, I was literally on every single phone call remotely with every single practitioner that she had an appointment with. I would take copious notes, organize them into civilian language, do some reading and research about what was said and then email the notes to her. She was very generous in letting me ask questions at the end of the appointment, and often they were questions she and her husband never would have thought of. I often put things that the oncologist or surgeon said in quotation marks, particularly if it was disturbing news. She said my note-taking made it so much better for her since she could just listen at the appointment and not have to worry about taking notes and trying to understand everything at once.
It also helped me because I could go into nurse mode and not have to think about the sister part until later that day. (I am getting help for that part).🥲
I’m retired from healthcare, and I find it a blessing and a curse all in one to age and know what I know or to recall the things I’ve seen over the years. Partly we have to know when to fold. Yes, a lot can be treated, but at what cost. Not in the sense of financial cost, but time, pain, and anxiety to live a little longer but with no better life.
Thank you for the message of "let's speak clearly, listen fully, and understand the lives before us."
As caretaker for both elders and a young person (with significant disability from health issues like Long COVID that is both misunderstood by the medical system and historically under researched by science) this hit home. Some don't want to know yet others desperately do.
I have most appreciated the doctors that have listened and explained things clearly with humility, ("We know that the immune system in some people continues to overreact after an infection but we don't know why")
Having seen both sides and spent a lot of time in medical settings, I would still choose to have clarity at least on what they think is going wrong. We still have so much to learn about our bodies and medicine.
Once again, an excellent article and thought-provoking topic. The line I always use is how much you’re willing to give up now in hopes that down the road you’ll gain a few days of additional life.
With the elderly, where does the line come between what medicine can do for a patient and what medicine cannot do. As you noted so well, your patient had no way to take advantage of the medical treatment unless the social issues preventing getting the care were resolved. Issues even beyond the reach of social workers. As the use of technology increases in the practice of medicine, at what point does the technology simply become a barrier to patient care. Primary care physicians used to be able to help patients tread this path, alas.