Medical Terminology Assignment Essay
As a person with excellent health, I have never thought of how complex the medical terminology may be, although I always had some inclination to work related to health care services. In fact, this was my work that uncovered how complex the medical terminology might be and how difficult it might be for patients to understand health care professionals. At the same time, health care professionals may be unaware of difficulties which their professional language may arise in their patients. In this regard, I recall my personal experience of working at the medical equipment store providing wheelchairs for patients, which revealed me the full extent to which patients may be puzzled by the medical terminology, which health care professionals and people working in this field could use easily without even thinking how comprehensible this terminology is for average people.Medical Terminology Assignment Essay
At this point, I would like to recall the case of a patient, who needed the wheelchair and ordered one from our company. In fact, the client called to our office and made the order. I remember how I talked to the client and he ordered the manual wheelchair, although I offered him a powered wheelchair and I even insisted that the customer purchased that powered wheelchair but he responded that he did not need the ‘extra power’ that seemed to me a little bit strange. The client insisted that he wanted to keep control over driving his wheelchair and does not need a powered wheelchair at all. As the client refused from buying the powered wheelchair, I offered him the best manual wheelchair we had and the client agreed to purchase it.
However, when he arrived to our store he was quite surprised, when I showed him his manual wheelchair. Frankly, I was surprised and even shocked too, especially when the client looked at me in astonishment and asked “and where’s the motor?” So, I understood that the customer definitively wanted the motorized wheelchair and I could not keep from remarking that I offered him one but he refused. Then, the client explained me that he definitely misunderstood what I was offering him. He believed that powered wheelchair was a motorized wheelchair with extra powered electric engine or something like that. Instead, he wanted the simplest motorized wheelchair which he could manipulate easily without the involvement of complex automatic and electronic systems. “You know I don’t like those gadgets and devices,” he told me in the course of our conversation. In fact, I found out that the client was not really informed of diverse types of wheelchairs which we could offer to him and the specific medical terminology used to define wheelchairs destined for different patients depending on their health problem and personal preferences made the client quite puzzled. Hence, he insisted on the simplest model but he did not even think of the possibility of taking fully manual wheelchair. He told that he was just considering motorized wheelchairs only. Therefore, the misunderstanding occurred because of his incompetence and unwillingness to obtain detailed information on our products. He just called and decided to buy a wheelchair, which he considered to suit him the most.Medical Terminology Assignment Essay
Fortunately, the client had not paid for the wheelchair before he arrived to our store and we tackled the problem fast since we got the point and offered our client what he really wanted and what he really liked – a simple motorized wheelchair with minimal interference of electronic systems. We clarified the issue and offered our client what he really wanted. However, that case has revealed the full extent to which medical terminology is difficult for an average person, who has never encountered specific professional terms, especially when clients deal with special equipment developed by companies for medical needs of customers (Ghodeswar & Vaidyanathan, 57).Medical Terminology Assignment Essay
On the other hand, I believe that the problem was not only the complexity of the medical terminology but also and mainly the problem was the unwillingness of the client to obtain detailed information on the product he was going to purchase (Miller, 114). In fact, I frequently encountered clients, who believed that they knew our products better than me, a person who sold wheelchairs professionally and spent several years in this business. Such clients pretended to be real savvies in wheelchair construction, design and use but, in actuality, it often turned out that they faced similar problems as the client, which I have just described, who misunderstood the medical terminology and extrapolated his experience from other fields onto the field of medicine.
Thus, taking into account all above mentioned, it is important to place emphasis on the fact that medical terminology may be very complex, if one does not want to know and learn more. Instead, patients, who ask questions and are interested to learn more, can easily find out what every specific term means but they should better consult a health care professional to obtain such information rather than consulting their friends or a website as many patients do.Medical Terminology Assignment Essay