What is there in a name?

 What is there in a name? A rose by any name smells the same! Remember the quote? This summary of it initiates our blog today. Yes, it is Juliet asserting the power of love.

Well, all is fair in love, but when it comes to the name game, I would like to differ with the greatest author ever. Well, my submission is that Shakespeare did not meet modern medical practitioners, nor did he have anything to do with modern medicine. If he were to get in to contact with either, he would surely have changed his opinion.

The name game or nomenclature in modern medicine is often more terrorising than the disease itself! Want proof? Okay! You are suffering from 'edema', says the expert. Means what? Swelling, simply! You have concussion. Translated in to daily lingo, it often means a bump 'coz you hit a hard surface.

First when I heard that Aai suffered from ischemia, my mouth went dry with worry and fear. In no time, i found out that it meant sudden loss of supply of blood to an organ, most often the brain or the heart. Of course, it is a medical emergency. Simplified, however, it causes less anxiety indeed.

You know what is maculopapular lesion, right? The simple itchy rash. Sure it needs treatment, but you need not worry much too much, okay? Would  you agree with me if I were to say that 'fever' is better than 'temperature'? Myocardial infarction, anyone? 'Heart attack' you would get just by listening to the term!

Remember the scene in "Anand" when the protagonist describes his disease? Well, precisely my point! Experts need the jargon for precision so very necessary in the field of  medicine and medical research. Absolutely agreed with! 

In the general communication with the hapless relative or the patient, is jargon necessary? Well, anyways, everyone has a multimedia mobile these days, and can diagnose the terms immediately, right?

Effective communication, i believe, is indeed important in certain spaces. Education is one such field. Who are students comfortable with? With the great learned Prof who bandies impossible terms or with the lady who yearns to make her students learn the concepts, the ideas involved, the underlying structures, for instance? Is she simplifying the concept in the process? Not really. She is in fact trying to lead the learner from the known to the unknown, right?

Undoubtedly, at the doctoral/research level, certain critical jargon could be normal. The same principle applies to medical practice, i believe. To acquire precision, so very centrally important in the medical field, given the life-n-death situation, accurate terms must be used.

While talking to the hapless relative or the patient, why terrify the scared souls already half dead with worry? Is it because now rules the specialist in the medical kingdom that high funda terms need to be bandied? Remember the  G.P., the "doctor uncle", a species almost extinct these days, whose very sweet talk made you feel better when you just 'saw' him, in all the senses of the term 'see'?

I suppose empathy is the base of any good communication, and in the medical connect, it requires a  'patient' listen-in to the inner identity of the suffering person so that his/ her journey from illness to wellness gets facilitated and expedited! What is there in a name indeed? A disease is dis-ease anyways!

Pratima@'Doctor, heal thyself' of brand(ed) terms!!!