Importance: Despite acknowledging that medical jargon should be avoided, health care practitioners frequently use it when communicating with patients.Objective: To characterize the understanding of common medical jargon terms by surveying a cross section of the general public and studying phrases that have established meanings in regular usage but different meanings in a medical context (eg, negative and positive test results).Design, Setting, and Participants: In this cross-sectional study, participants indicated their understanding of phrases that may have different meanings in medicine than in colloquial English via a mix of short answer and multiple choice questions. Several questions included paired phrases to assess for differences in understanding with or without jargon. Volunteers were recruited at the 2021 Minnesota State Fair near St Paul, Minnesota. An electronic survey was given to a volunteer sample of 215 adults (>18 years) who did not work or train to work in the medical field and spoke and read English.Exposures: Completing a written or verbal survey.Main Outcomes and Measures: The main outcome was an accurate understanding of the medical terminology. Free-text responses were coded by 2 researchers for comprehension. Secondary outcomes looked for associations between volunteer demographics and understanding.Results: The 215 respondents (135 [63%] female; mean [SD] age, 42 [17] years) demonstrated a varied ability to interpret medical jargon phrases. For example, most participants (207 [96%]) knew that negative cancer screening results meant they did not have cancer, but fewer participants (143 [79%]) knew that the phrase “your tumor is progressing” was bad news, or that positive lymph nodes meant the cancer had spread (170 [67%]). While most (171 [80%]) recognized that an unremarkable chest radiography was good news, only 44 participants (21%) correctly understood that a clinician saying their radiography was impressive was generally bad news. In each of the paired phrases comparing jargon vs nonjargon approaches, the nonjargon phrase was understood significantly better (P < .001).Conclusions and Relevance: These findings suggest that several common phrases are misunderstood when used in a medical setting, with the interpreted meaning frequently the exact opposite of what is intended.

Game-based learning (GBL) in medical education is emerging as a valid alternative to traditional teaching methods. Well-designed GBL sessions use non-threatening competition to capitalize on heightened learner arousal, allowing for high-level engagement and dynamic group discussion. While many templates for specific educational games have been published, little has been written on strategies for educators to create their own or how to use them with maximal effectiveness. These 12 tips provide specific recommendations for the successful design and implementation of GBL sessions in medical education based on a review of the literature and insight from experienced designers.

From the standpoint of medicine as art for the prevention and cure of disease, the man who translates the hieroglyphics of science into the plain language of healing is certainly the most useful.

Trainees and clinicians from high-income countries are increasingly engaging in global health (GH) efforts, particularly in resource-limited settings. Concomitantly, there is a growing demand for these individuals to be better prepared for the common challenges and controversies inherent in GH work. This is a state-of-the-art review article in which we outline what is known about the current scope of trainee and clinician involvement in GH experiences, highlight specific considerations and issues pertinent to GH engagement, and summarize preparation recommendations that have emerged from the literature. The article is focused primarily on short-term GH experiences, although much of the content is also pertinent to long-term work. Suggestions are made for the health care community to develop and implement widely endorsed preparation standards for trainees, clinicians, and organizations engaging in GH experiences and partnerships.

Although there has been rapid growth in global health educational experiences over the last two decades, the flow of learners remains overwhelmingly one directional; providers from high-resourced settings travel to limited-resourced environments to participate in clinical care, education, and/or research. Increasingly, there has been a call to promote parity in partnerships, including the development of bidirectional exchanges, where trainees from each institution travel to the partner’s setting to learn from and teach each other. As global health educators and steering committee members of the Association of Pediatric Program Directors Global Health Pediatric Education Group, we endorse the belief that we must move away from merely sending learners to international partner sites and instead become true global health partners offering equitable educational experiences. In this article, we summarize the benefits, review common challenges, and highlight solutions to hosting and providing meaningful global health experiences for learners from limited-resourced partner institutions to academic health centers in the United States.

Phenomenon: Factors related to individual circumstance and organizational climate are contributing to a worsening burnout problem among providers in healthcare settings. In the academic health center, junior faculty may be at particular risk for burnout given intersecting responsibilities of clinical expertise, research rigor, teaching commitments, and service expectations. To date, much of the focus on preventing and mitigating burnout has been located at the individual level, addressing lifestyle modification and self-regulation skills. We sought to examine relationships between institutional context and burnout qualities as a means to identify opportunities for organizational leadership to address faculty burnout. Approach: Data are from a baseline survey of assistant professors (faculty with diverse ratios for clinical, research, and teaching responsibilities) located within a pediatrics department in an academic medical center. Pearson correlation coefficients and logistic regression models were used to examine relationships between institutional factors (mentorship, collaboration opportunities, feelings of empowerment, value, and support of well-being) and experiences of burnout as measured by the original 22-item Maslach Burnout Inventory (subscales: Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Low Personal Accomplishment). Findings: Three perceived institutional characteristics were significantly associated with all three dimensions of burnout, particularly emotional exhaustion, which decreased with increasing perception of (a) empowerment to communicate professional needs, (b) feeling valued for contributions to the department, and (c) department commitment to support faculty well-being. In multivariate logistic regression models, adjusted for gender identity and years since training, increased positive perceptions of these three institutional characteristics were associated with significantly lower odds of burnout. For example, for each unit increase along a 5-point rating scale in feeling empowered to communicate needs and feeling valued for contributions to the department, the odds of meeting cutoff scores for burnout were reduced by 78% (p = .002) to 84% (p = .002), respectively. Insights: Although much of the focus on addressing burnout in healthcare settings has been on promoting coping skills and building resilience at the individual level, our findings add to a growing literature documenting a significant role for institutional leadership in identifying and facilitating strategies to promote faculty well-being. Findings also support leadership’s role for improving institutional climate via creating opportunities to increase faculty perceptions of empowerment and value in the department.