Talking the Doc-talk

doc·tor·speak (dktr-spk) n. Specialized or technical language used by physicians and others working in health care; medical jargon.

The Communicator’s Role:

Take complex ideas and boil them down to simple terms, organized in a logical manner and including only what is essential for your target audience to digest in order to understand the main idea.

Here’s my problem- I’m starting to understand all of these complex terms and instead of using simpler terms, I’m getting caught up with trying to be accurate — and I’m defending using them!

Help!

So here’s my list so far…

1. Utilize. Use? (This one’s easy. Anything with an “ize” is unnecessary.)
2. Facilitate. Help? (Ok, not so hard.)
3. Sequelae…. yeah, I dare you to try to pronounce this one. This is a noun, in plural form, which refers to a morbid condition or symptom following a disease. After-effects?
4. Symptom. I thought this was okay to use, but there is a better word- effect!

There’s tons more, but a lot of it it just unnecessary. So instead of boiling it down to simpler terms, it gets cut because it’s not essential in understanding the main idea or message. Like: “… in the sub-acute phase…”

I must say, this does inspire creativity and more variety for scrabble night!