The past year I have been volunteering with my local ambulance corp. For the last few months I have been enrolled in school to become an Emergency Medical Technician, EMT. Having no medical background prior to volunteering, the medical terminology used by the ambulance corp. members was extremely hard for me to initial learn and understand. During training at the ambulance corp., some students were already EMT’s and some, like me, were not. Therefore, when the trainers or fellow students used medical terms, it was completely foreign to me. For example, when the medical personnel would say things such as “nitro” I thought they were talking about the gas, nitro. I was confused because they were talking about administering “nitro” to a patient. Later I found out that “nitro” was short …show more content…
I have found that the number one negative outcome that can occur when using medical jargon to a layperson such as the patient or their family, is that it can be confusing and overwhelming. Sometimes, it is hard for medical personnel to explain subject matter or treatments to a layperson without using complex medical terminology for multiple reasons. One being that after years and years of using medical jargon, the EMT or Paramedic might think that specific words or terms are common knowledge even to nonmedical personnel. They simply forget that most people are not familiar with medical terms because to them, it is second nature. Secondly, it becomes difficult for EMT’s to simplify medical jargon for patients because for a number of words or terms, there is no clear definition but rather a complex concept which is hard and sometime unnecessary to explain to patients. Furthermore, whether you’re a new student or a patient, medical jargon appears as a foreign language which takes time and effort to adapt