THEY THINK THEY ARE CONFUSED!

The use of jargon is a blight on the NHS and could end up harming patient care, doctors and campaigners say.

The British Medical Association and Plain English Campaign have criticised the use of words such as service users and clients to describe patients.

They said gobbledygook phrases were causing confusion for staff and patients alike.
The government agreed jargon was a problem and said it was working with NHS trusts to improve communication.

The issue will be debated at the annual meeting of the BMA consultants group on Wednesday.

West Yorkshire consultant anaesthetist Peter Bamber, who proposed the motion, said: "We see all sorts of phrases creeping into the NHS.

"Some of it is an attempt to destigmatise conditions, but I do not think there is anything wrong with the use of 'patient'.

"Using something else suggests the condition may be something the person should just snap out of and that is damaging in itself."

Other phrases highlighted included "disinvestments" instead of "cuts", "proof of concept" instead of "pilot" and "let's take this discussion off-line" in place of "let's talk about this afterwards".

And a document about a new pay deal for nurses and NHS support staff was also highlighted.

It included the passage: "Where the combined value of the above payments before actual assimilation remains greater than the combined value of the payments after assimilation, the former level of pay will be protected."

Dr Paul Hobday, a GP in Kent who has complained to his local trust about the use of jargon, said: "I got guidance recently asking me to record the ethnicity of patients. It was five pages long and full of management speak when it only needed to be a few sentences.

"The problem with this is that either the doctor does not bother reading it or spends too much time doing so which takes them away from patients."

Well, doctors, don’t sit there complaining about it DO SOMETHING!


“I’m not confused, I’m just well mixed.”-Robert Frost "quoted in Wall Street Journal (New York)", August 5, 1969


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