Public understanding of medical terms more than five times higher with Lexacom
Understanding of medical terms is more than five times higher with Lexacom, according to a recent YouGov survey of UK adults.
General knowledge of medical terms and phrases
Within the general public there is some understanding of medical terms, benign and anti-inflammatory, for example. Commonly used medical phrases people come across in newspapers, and when watching television.
Through life experience, many people will also be familiar with other terms, perhaps angina, or hypotension, as conditions that occur relatively frequently affect friends and family.
What happens though, when it comes to language so often used in general practice, but unheard of to most people? With the advent of the Citizen Access programme, patients are being exposed to unfamiliar terms; entirely normal diagnoses now have the potential to cause concern, and misunderstanding terms used in notes can be incredibly worrying for patients.
The Citizen Access programme is being rolled out as general practitioners work through extraordinarily busy times and face increasingly strained relationships with patients. Further, there is the potential burden on practice staff of patients getting in touch for explanations of their notes.
The importance of health literacy
Health literacy is an increasing concern for public health. A surprising amount of the general population don’t have the understanding to make decisions about their health, which creates health inequalities.
People with better health literacy have better health: lower rates of admission into emergency care, better abilities to communicate with healthcare professionals and, starkly, half the rates of poor health.
With knowledge, patients gain confidence in making decisions about their own wellbeing, and also the wellbeing of those they care for. Confidence also increases in using healthcare systems, and the professionals they interact with.
Communicating effectively improves health literacy, and a key part of successful communication between patients and clinical staff is using easy-to-understand language.
How Comprehension Engine® helps patients understand
Lexacom has developed Comprehension Engine®, truly revolutionary technology that powers our speech recognition software, Lexacom Echo.
With no extra effort from a clinician, Comprehension Engine® uses an NHS specific medical dictionary to recognise and define medical terms in plain English:
- apyrexial becomes apyrexial (did not have a high temperature)
- cardiomegaly becomes cardiomegaly (enlarged heart)
- hepatomegaly becomes hepatomegaly (enlarged liver)
Our dictionary covers hundreds of medical terms, each giving patients a better understanding of their conditions when viewing their notes in the NHS app.
The survey
2078 respondents were asked to imagine they were reading notes taken by their GP following a doctor’s appointment. To show how well Comprehension Engine® helps patients understand, four different medical terms were tested, all undoubtedly unfamiliar to the general public. Half of the respondents were given plain notes (a) and asked what they meant. Half of the respondents were given the same notes: but dictated with Lexacom Echo (b).
(a) The original notes read:
The patient has tachypnoea and dyspnoea with significant miosis and epiphora.
(b) When a clinician dictates or types these notes using Lexacom Echo, the notes read:
The patient has tachypnoea (rapid, shallow breathing) and dyspnoea (shortness of breath) with significant miosis (pinpoint pupils) and epiphora (watering eyes).
Each set of respondents then selected what they thought the notes meant.
