tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6972917593484183215.post6171893517307075791..comments2009-11-29T18:48:29.165-08:00Comments on Excelsior: Latin and Greek are too difficult. Thus, get rid of them.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06200319733737651773noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6972917593484183215.post-90155350965289072662008-09-23T08:21:00.000-07:002008-09-23T08:21:00.000-07:00From Melinda Lyons :-I admit, my original article ...From Melinda Lyons :-<BR/>I admit, my original article has attracted considerable attention and the "spin-offs" from it don't really capture the essence of my message. <BR/>My expertise is in human error and my emphasis is to consider the contribution of language to such error. There are some terms (highlighted in the article) that introduce risk. <BR/>Consider an emergency situation where the patient requires immediate care and the environment is noisy. <BR/>Consider that this may be at night where a junior doctor has to contact a senior doctor to discuss a condition and ask for recommendations for treatment. <BR/>Consider if the senior doctor has quite a dominant personality, or is hard of hearing<BR/>Now, what if one of these terms is "hypo" and it is mistook for "hyper", either<BR/>a) there is some delay while one or the other side clarifies which term was used<BR/>b) there is an assumption that one term is used leading to a potential error and potentially wrong treatment;<BR/>I think would be a little impossible to remove ALL the Latin and Greek from normal language let alone the classically-dominated clinical language (would there be much left???) and that was not the intnetion of the paper - just the emphasis where they are lookalike / soundalike and used in risk-prone situations and there are well-known terms that are available without these associated risks. <BR/>As an additional, I studied Latin at school and liked it very much and studied Greek at university recently as I believed it was important. <BR/>Thanks for the comments!mlyonshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02406740518780364311noreply@blogger.com