For those of you accustomed to my verbose ramblings, this one should be a relief.
I would like to encourage our profession to develop more precision in our speech. In the 40 years I have been in practice (good heavens!) and the 28 years I have been in industry, I have found myself constantly amazed at the lack of precision in our speech, and the resulting confusion we create within those who lack the context to figure out what we mean.
For example, consider the word "drug":
- Sometimes we use it to mean a chemical therapeutic entity
- Sometimes we use it to mean a commercial pharmaceutical product
- Sometimes we use it to mean an abstraction of all commercial products that deliver the same medication in the same amount in the same doseage form
Typically, if most of us listen to the conversation long enough, we can figure out how the speaker intends us to interpret the word in this particular conversation. But that is highly dependent on our outlook and our experience.
It gets even more confusing when we treat different concentrations of the same chemical entity as if they were different drugs. For example, we often treat treat 0.9% Sodium Chloride as if it were a completely different substance than 3% sodium chloride.
The problem is that, when we talk to other healthcare providers, or to people outside the profession (like software designers and programmers), we wind up completely miscommunicating our need because we have become dependent on their understanding our imprecision contextually.
All this suggests that our terminology has evolved rather than being designed. Maybe it's time to discipline ourselves to design a terminology that is sufficiently precise that we can carry on a meaningful conversation with others and they know what we mean.
Or maybe not.
What is your opinion?
Dennis A. Tribble, Pharm. D., FASHP
Daytona Beach, FL
DATdoc@aol.com
The opinions expressed herein are my own, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or of ASHP.