Anatomy Terminology in the Media - Case Study Example

Anatomy in the Media Introduction. In modern medicine it has been recognized that communication is a very important part of the day to day professional life of any medical practitioner. This is true at the highest and most technical levels where doctors and researchers invent new words and phrases for an always increasing range of complicated items and procedures. It is true also in every consultation between a medical professional and a patient or a patient’s relative or carer, where there is often a big gap between the professional’s knowledge of medical terminology and the non-professionals’ knowledge. There is also a wide range of different factors like age, education, language background, or even social class, which can affect the way a patient needs to communicate about medical things.. Any information connected to medical processes, including instructions on medicines, reports, and verbal advice must be carefully and responsibly produced, usually with several checking procedures just making sure everything is in order. Fortunately, medical training these days gives plenty of time and attention to the issue of accurate and appropriate communication in clinical settings, even though the terminology can feel like a whole second language for students (Scanlon and Sanders, 2007, p.12). This trainingis allows patients, carers and professionals to have meaningful conversations about quite complex matters. In these situations the medical professional has a duty to make sure that what he or she communicates is presented clearly and accurately and also to check that the listener or reader has understood the content of what is said or written, and its implications for his or her actual case. Medical issues are often serious and can carry very difficult and emotional consequences for affected persons, which is why this training and professional approach are necessary. When medical issues are taken out of the clinical setting, however, these measures to protect the interests of vulnerable or affected persons are no longer there. Reporting of medical affairs in the popular press is one example of a situation where the usual rules for medical communication do not exist. Information can appear which is misleading, inaccurate, and even in some cases actually dangerous. This paper examines two press articles which focus on two medical cases using terminology appropriate to anatomy. First, it introduces the context of the two articles and audience likely to be reading the articles in that context. After that, the anatomical terminology will be analysed, highlighting those examples which are not appropriate for this audience and explaining why this is so. A number of alternatives and improvements are suggested in order to remedy the weaknesses of the two texts. Finally conclusions are drawn regarding the use of audience-specific terminology in this particular field of anatomy and beyond. The Two Articles and their Audience. Texts 1 and 2 are short articles written by a journalist in a style which is suitable for general readers of average intelligence and education. This can be deduced from the fairly simple vocabulary and sentence structure that both texts use. The two texts may have been delivered in printed form but they are likely to have reached their largest audience via the Internet as sports sections of a bigger news site. They have the usual headline plus short sentences style of journalism, and the tone is informal using plenty of direct speech with shortened verb forms like Darcy’s; wasn,t; don’t think; (Text 1) and that’s sitting; you can’t; we’re in; he’ll need; he’s; they’ve (Text 2). There are also a number of conversational terms that reflect a casual tone of voice for example this guy (Text 1) and a fair whack (Text 2). Anatomical terminology is a noticeable exception to the straightforward vocabulary, and this is due to the topic being in both cases a serious medical intervention that a football player has recently had. The main purpose of the texts appears to be reporting on the fortunes of the players in the context of competitive regional football teams. The purpose is not mainly to describe the anatomy. This distinction is important because it underlines the fact that both the journalist writing the text and the readers reading it are not medical specialists. It is a situation where a layman is writing to other laymen, which produces great potential for misrepresentation and or misunderstanding of the anatomical facts presented here. The majority of sports fans, sports journalists, and sports personalities that appear in the popular press are male. Sports journalism is a medium which builds on the male bonding that occurs every weekend when men and boys follow their own team in national and international leagues. Some see sports journalism as a way of getting “a sense of shared purpose and group identity” (Beard, 1998, p. 3). The headlines in each case start with a part of the person’s surname, either first name: Darcy’s alive and kicking (Text 1) or surname: Pears’ pancreas injury likely to end season. There is no need to give the full name of the person, the team or the sport because the readers are going to be already very familiar with all of those details and they come to the text looking for more information about the welfare of their own team, either directly via description of team members, or indirectly via accounts of the ups and downs that potential opponents are going through. Starting the articles with the name of a sporting hero is a deliberate way of drawing this sports-mad audience into the text. Mentioning a serious medical issue in main heading or the sub heading adds drama and suspense, since the wellbeing of the player affects his ability to contribute to the game, and consequently the reader’s satisfaction or otherwise in the performance of his team. Anatomically Related Terminology in Text 1 Text 1 deals with an intervention to treat a congenital heart condition while Text 2 deals with an injury to the pancreas sustained while playing football. These are potentially life-threatening conditions and it is interesting that the descriptions in the two articles of the underlying medical conditions approach this fact differently. The heart of Darcy McCallum is described in very negative terms at the outset: his deformed heart and this sweeping label does not convey the complexity of the organ itself and the many different kinds of valve damage, of varying degrees of severity, that can occur around the heart. The article suggests that this deformity can be easily and quickly removed by a switch-back operation which an Australian hospital has designed just for him, and for the purposes of allowing him to carry on pursuing a professional sports career. A number of everyday words are used to describe the original procedure which was carried out when he was a baby, including repair, install, reverse, disconnecting and reconnecting and this is fairly standard language used by medical personnel to describe the mechanical relationships between valves, veins, and the heart muscle. The analogy of a machine pumping liquid is easy for laymen to understand and so it is a good choice of approach. It has just one disadvantage, which is that is can understate the risks involved in surgery, and so a sentence about this could be added for the sake of balanced reporting. There is one sentence in the article which seems to be a plausible layman’s explanation of the original heart condition: Mr McCallum was born a “blue baby”, meaning the arteries of his heart were connected in the wrong order in a condition known as transference of the great artery. On closer examination, however, it is apparent that this sentence is again making a sweeping overall generalisation that does not take account of the complexity of the issue, or add any clarity to the text. The introduction of the phrase blue baby with a definition which means that is quite a good idea, since people may have heard of this term, but not be clear about what it means. Unfortunately the clarifying definition that the author makes in terms of arteries being in the wrong order and causing a condition called transference of the great artery is quite simply incorrect. The so-called blue baby syndrome, is a non-medical descriptive term that could be applied to a number of different conditions with various causes, some of which have nothing to do with arteries. The term transference may here also be confused with transposition and there is even a suggestion that the heart has just one great artery. The journalist is certain to have lost his readers at this point in a bundle of meaningless jargon. It would have been better to omit the blue baby mention altogether and stick to the simpler analogy of valves and pumps. If the journalist wanted to give more technical information in minute valve by valve detail, then an illustration with an appropriate key is essential at this point. As it is the reader cannot fit the pieces of the description together in any sensible fashion. The same tendency is repeated later in article 1 in the sentence: Desperate to maintain Mr McCallum’s lifestyle, Dr Skillington reversed part of the original operation by again disconnecting the two arteries, removing the valve from the pulmonary artery and placing it back in the aorta where it had originally come from. This sentence is difficult enough to follow in isolation, but it is even more difficult when read alongside the earlier sentence which spoke about transference of the great artery. Any non- specialist at this point must be thoroughly confused about the number of arteries involved, and the exact meaning of the technical terms valve, arteries, pulmonary artery, great artery and aortic valve and aorta. This last term aorta in particular is a difficult one for laymen because it is not like any other standard English noun and there is no clue in its spelling or its sound as to its meaning. It is likely that the author has little idea what he is talking about here, and only wants to hype up the motivation of the doctor (desperate to maintain) with a blinding display of scientific jargon. This glorifies the doctor and makes the patient a hero. Unfortunately it also muddles the anatomical facts to an unacceptable degree. The only way to improve this confusing jumble of terms is to summarize the main point simply in standard English, for example: “Dr Skillington used human tissue to restore the flow of blood through the heart”. Anatomical Terminology in Text 2. The second article (Text 2) displays a similar mixture of ordinary, informal language and technical terminology. The medical condition of Tayte Pears is first described in neutral terms in the heading using the phrase pancreas injury. This is followed by a further simple description bruised pancreas which a layman would probably not interpret as a serious injury. One study has noted that the language used to describe a condition greatly affects the way that people who are not medically qualified will perceive that condition: “If a patient is informed that she has gastro-esophageal reflux disease, rather than chronic heartburn, she could consider herself to be more ill …” (Young, Norman and Humphreys, 2008, no page number). This would suggest that the everyday language of Text 2 underestimates the severity of a condition which could have been described as “pancreatic contusion” or “traumatic pancreatitis” in a technical context. The next sentence mentions the 25-centimetre gash from navel to sternum which pinpoints the site of the operation incision with anatomical accuracy and technical names for the location. The word gash however, does not at all match the medical language of the location, suggesting that the journalist wants to dramatise the action of having the operation done, while still maintaining the clever sounding medical names. The effect is almost comical – again making both footballer and surgeon actors in some kind of drama. A little later in Text 2 the journalist, who is not a medical specialist, mentions an accidental knee to the stomach” using the term knee as a verb indicating the way that physical contact occurred between one player’s knee and the other’s stomach. The journalist then quotes the football club doctor who combines proper anatomical words, for example spinal chord, spinal column, pancreas with childish language like squash right through, your own tummy. It is very doubtful whether a football audience would appreciate the distinction between spinal chord and spinal column but this is not a big problem since the main focus is on the pancreas and not the anatomy of the spine. This article could have been improved by choosing either a fairly neutral and neutral description of anatomical details, using standard but not too technical terminology, or a more layman friendly and colourful narrative. Mixing the two styles creates a confusing effect where the reader cannot tell how serious the medical issues actually are. The doctor’s repetition of the theme of the opening lines of the story, namely that the injury seems to be fairly minor, reveals that the journalist is cleverly weaving technical and non- technical narratives together for a purpose. The doctor, quoted like an authority, makes vivid compariosons with bowel activity and the Achilles tendon, so that the audience can imagine the sort of problems facing Pears by way of organs that they know something about. The location and function of the pancreas are not generally well known or understood by the public, and so these descriptions are an attempt to pump up a simple one line event into a full newspaper article. The reference to the Achilles tendon is not especially appropriate to this pancreas case, but it is added presumably because footballers often suffer from leg injuries and it is more familiar to the audience. The final anatomical reference of Text 2 mentions a hernia – this again is not strictly relevant to the pancreas injury itself. The hernia mention rounds off the opening line of the article which speaks of Pears being out of action for the season by mentioning the potential that there was for him not being fit for the next ten years of his career, except for the heroic diagnosis of the team doctor and intervention of the surgeons. Conclusion: The Anatomy of Sport The analysis of these two texts has revealed that journalists and their audience enjoy talking about the health of their heroes. The terminology of anatomy that is used can be misleading because it is not always accurate, and it is usually mixed in with descriptions that are sensational and emotive. A lot of people can influence the sort of information that is released to the press and this analysis shows that medical people who work in public situations, like football team doctors, could have a lot of influence on what people are given to read. The large numbers of men who watch football matches probably learn a significant amount of their medical knowledge from this sort of article, which is a big worry, because so much of it is sensationalised, and underestimates the amount of risk in surgical procedures. Not everybody is as fit or as rich as the famous footballers, and so taking them as a medical role model, or believing the half-truths of the sports journalists is a dangerous thing.   Works Cited Beard, A. The Language of Sport. Routledge: London and New York, 1998. Hogan, J. “Pears’ Pancreas Injury Likely to End Season” June 22, 2010. (text 2). Scanlon, V. C. and Sanders, T. Essentials of Anatomy and Physiology. Philadelphia: F A Davis, 2007. The Mercury. (author not named). Darcy’s Alive and Kicking. June 28, 2010. (Text 1). Thompson, T.L., Dorsey, A.M., Miller, I, Parrott, R. Handbook of Health Communication. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. Young, M.E., Norman. G.R. and Humphreys, K.R. “The Role of Medical Language in Changing Public Perceptions of Illness.” 2008, no page number. Online article available at: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0003875 Read More