tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6993740852730466692.post8258212172341396572..comments2024-03-18T03:31:10.487-07:00Comments on Regina Holliday's Medical Advocacy Blog: The Dangers of JargonRegina Hollidayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14067714192642008661noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6993740852730466692.post-42361602014756720012010-07-16T07:03:15.786-07:002010-07-16T07:03:15.786-07:00You have to be careful conflating "jargon&quo...You have to be careful conflating "jargon" with "hard words." Jargon is most commonly defined as: "The technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group." (Many great speakers use hard words, but do so in a context that makes their meaning obvious.)<br /><br />Examples of jargon might be words like "set" in mathematics, "haircut" in finance, "loop" in computing. "Orthogonal", on the other hand, is a word that embodies a general concept that is applied (often as metaphor) without changing the meaning.<br /><br />This is all just semantics, but semantics can be important. On the issue of medical records, many physicians make the claim that they are not understandable by laypeople. This leads one to the "orthogonal" versus "haircut" question: are medical records written in jargon, so that they are not understandable by the uninitiated, or are they written in high-level language, so that they are understandable with some thought and a dictionary? Jargon can be defined as "local idiom," or common use that can't be understood by the literal meaning of the words, such as "haircut" == "enormous fees". (The double equals sign is computing jargon for "is equivalent to").<br /><br />In fact, medical records are written in jargon, but this is not relevant: many patients who want their medical records want them to provide to another person versed in reading medical records. Many patients who want to read their medical records themselves actually know the jargon. The claim that patients shouldn't have copies of their records because they are written in jargon is doubly misleading: it does not refute the reasons that patients often want them, and does not explain the reasons that providers don't want to release them.Peter Schmidthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17965974362272161821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6993740852730466692.post-36954429291434410942010-01-14T23:04:01.075-08:002010-01-14T23:04:01.075-08:00What always gets me upset is how quickly we learn ...What always gets me upset is how quickly we learn another type of jargon that is not related to medicine. It is the jargon imposed on us by the insurance companies. They invent weird things like pre-ex, and we learn these weird terms as they become part of our lives.the ice chewerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06829348019231897027noreply@blogger.com