This past Christmas, I took a high-velocity wooden block to the shin, because nothing says “Merry Christmas” like extremely competitive yard games.

My leg was still bruised and swollen a week later, so eventually I dragged myself to urgent care to make sure I hadn’t fractured it.

After spending two hours in the waiting room, I finally saw a doctor, and once I explained the situation, the first thing he asked me was “Can you ambulate?”

For a moment, I wondered why we had switched to Latin, as “ambulate” was a word I’d only encountered in Latin class, but then I realized we were not actually speaking Latin. We were speaking Medical Jargon.

“Yeah, I can walk,” I said, defining ambulate, to ensure we were speaking the same language, because I wasn’t confident at that point.

He nodded and revealed that my shin wasn’t fractured, instead I had a “contusion,” and that was the end of the visit. I left wondering what percentage of patients understood this doctor.

The Language Problem

Trust in healthcare professionals is waning, and speaking in a language that the public does not understand is undoubtably part of the problem.

It alienates people. When patients are confused and intimidated by their doctor’s vocabulary, many will not speak up. Instead, they remain confused, unsure what they’re supposed to do. They’re then deemed “noncompliant” when they fail to follow their doctor’s opaque instructions.

This language problem also makes some patients not want to participate in the healthcare system at all—instead seeking alternative (and unproven) treatments from people who can speak their language.

Dumbing It Down

I was recently at a workshop where a physician explained that he’s been very successful at getting patients to join a research study because he’s able to “dumb it down” for them.

He’s halfway there, as demonstrated by his success, but he still has a huge language problem.

Assuming the patient is dumb is a bad starting point for any relationship. It can also create a self-fulfilling prophecy: We assume the patient won’t understand the treatment, so we don’t explain the treatment, so they don’t understand the treatment.

Not understanding medical jargon or fifty-cent words does not mean the patient is dumb. It simply means that they speak a different language from our medical one. We wouldn’t assume someone is dumb because they speak French, not English. Similarly, people outside the health system speak different languages than those within it. They likely know words the average healthcare professional would not, such as jargon from their own profession or slang from their community.

So how do we cross that language divide?

Plain Language

The solution to bridge this language gap is plain language. Plain language is not dumbing it down. It is speaking (and writing) in a way that is accessible and easy to understand.

There are a few key tools in the plain-language toolbox:

• Short sentences.
• Direct and straightforward language.
• Active voice.
• Commonplace, everyday vocabulary.
• No acronyms, initialisms, or jargon.

In written form, this also includes considerations for readability, such as using short paragraphs with plenty of white spaces, descriptive headings, and bulleted lists.

It’s also, despite its name, not plain. Plain language can be beautiful. For example, metaphors are an important part of plain language. When explaining a concept that a person does not understand, you can compare it to one they do.

Graphics and images are also important parts of plain language, because the saying “a picture speaks a thousand words” is true.

Plain language, despite being easy to understand, is not necessarily easy to execute. It requires that you understand your audience and what they need. It may also require breaking old habits that have been entrenched in you since high school when you were told you need to fill your essay to the brim with SAT vocabulary.

But it’s also not hard to start. Sometimes it’s just asking, “Can you walk?”