ArticleHealth expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy2016
Medical terminology in online patient-patient communication: evidence of high health literacy?
Article in Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Which Chemotherapy-Related Terms Were Difficult for Cancer Patients, and Who Would Have the Most Difficulties?Cancer research and treatment · 2025Article
- Bridging the gap: assessing public understanding of medical terms in Saudi arabia's multilingual healthcare context.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Promoting Health Literacy With Human-in-the-Loop Video Understandability Classification of YouTube Videos: Development and Evaluation Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
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- An Introduction to Health Literacy and Social Contexts with Recommendations for Health Professionals and Researchers.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Analysis of individual characteristics influencing user polarization in COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.Computers in human behavior · 2023Article
- Search Term Identification Methods for Computational Health Communication: Word Embedding and Network Approach for Health Content on YouTube.JMIR medical informatics · 2022Article
- Commonly used terminology in oral surgery and oral medicine: the patient's perspective.British dental journal · 2021Article
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- Exploring Health Literacy in Individuals with Alcohol Addiction: A Mixed Methods Clinical Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Gamified E-learning in medical terminology: the TERMInator tool.BMC medical education · 2020Article
- Surgical patients' use of, and attitudes towards, the internet for e-patient activities in Germany and Oman.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2020Article
- Surgeons' Interactions With and Attitudes Toward E-Patients: Questionnaire Study in Germany and Oman.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Article
- Patient and Health Care Provider Experiences With a Recently Introduced Patient Portal in an Academic Hospital in the Netherlands: Mixed Methods Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2019Article
- Outpatient communication patterns in a cancer hospital in China: A qualitative study of doctor-patient encounters.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
backgroundHealth communication research and guidelines often recommend that medical terminology be avoided when communicating with patients due to their limited understanding of medical terms. However, growing numbers of e-patients use the Internet to equip themselves with specialized biomedical knowledge that is couched in medical terms, which they then share on participatory media, such as online patient forums.
objectiveGiven possible discrepancies between preconceptions about the kind of language that patients can understand and the terms they may actually know and use, the purpose of this paper was to investigate medical terminology used by patients in online patient forums.
designUsing data from online patient-patient communication where patients communicate with each other without expert moderation or intervention, we coded two data samples from two online patient forums dedicated to thyroid issues.
resultsPrevious definitions of medical terms (dichotomized into technical and semi-technical) proved too rudimentary to encapsulate the types of medical terms the patients used. Therefore, using an inductive approach, we developed an analytical framework consisting of five categories of medical terms: dictionary-defined medical terms, co-text-defined medical terms, medical initialisms, medication brand names and colloquial technical terms. The patients in our data set used many medical terms from all of these categories. DISCUSSION AND
conclusionsOur findings suggest the value of a situated, condition-specific approach to health literacy that recognizes the vertical kind of knowledge that patients with chronic diseases may have. We make cautious recommendations for clinical practice, arguing for an adaptive approach to medical terminology use with patients.
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