How DO nurses make it through med school without learning proper terminology?
Asking a patient whether the issue is with their internal or external vagina? There is no such thing as an external vagina.
Internal = Vagina
External = Vulva
Ladies, smarten up. Referring to your vulva as your vagina makes YOU look dumb and uninformed. As a medical “professional” it makes you look like you don’t belong in the workplace until you’ve mastered basic anatomy. —Mulva
This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2015.
Medical professionals speak the language of the lowest common denominator. 98% patients would not know the terminology.
When taking blood from the forearm they do not use the term antebrachial.
Medical information is written at a Grade 8 level in Canada so the majority of people can understand it. If a person comes across a word they do not understand that is the point they stop reading.
Those who are marginal are the ones who soak up most of our healthcare resources so we need to try and keep them informed.
No need to get your cephalic in a knot over it.
Your initial question if incoherent. Nurses do not go to “med school” but are trained at a school of nursing attached to a hospital. Next time you see a nurse, look at her pin. It will tell which hospital. And why are you hung up on the internal- vagina, external – vulva distinction? Using the term “external vagina” instead of “vulva” is completely understandable. You sound like you’re the one who is dumb and uninformed.
so what was wrong with it?
Mulva,
How is Dolores?
It was an external vagina I guess…
So THAT’S what a vulva is, eh…!?!
I’m just grateful when a health professional doesn’t call it “down there” or “vajayjay”.
No one ever says “look at the urethra on that guy, he’s hung like a horse.”
Why do guys get to own the correct name to their genitalia but the correct anatomical name for a girl’s genitalia is misrepresented? Are we not worthy of the knowledge of our own bodies?
Well, I doubt that it was a deliberate attempt at confusing or misinforming the patient.
More likely it was just an instance of using a more generally familiar (if inaccurate) term for the sake of directing a question to get the information needed.
I would think a woman with enough intelligence to know the difference would feel insulted at being dumbed down to the generally familiar, if inaccurate, term. Why not raise the bar instead by using the correct terminology, thus educating women about their own bodies?
Are there any other parts of the anatomy, male or female, that are inaccurately named? I can’t think of one. Why so then, for the female’s genitals? It is odd.
There aren’t many doctors and nurses who have the time during the allotted 10 minute appointment to teach a female patient the correct terminology for her genitalia.
I guess the time to draw the line on anatomical accuracy is when doctors and nurses start referring to one’s face as one’s ass. LOL
I think a big part of being intelligent is being able to overlook an occasional minor error and keep in mind the bigger picture: is this nurse otherwise skilled, professional, and also compassionate in the very difficult job that she (or he) is doing?
If so, then cut the person a bit of slack and be grateful that they are available to help us all out when we need them most. Not everyone could do that job, and the ones who do it well should be commended, not bitched about.
It’s all vag to me.
Chances are the nurse was assuming that the patient was a graduate of a NS high school and was functionally illiterate and not exactly versed in medical terminology. You kinda gotta work with the lowest common denominator as the theme around these parts…
C-U Next Tuesday…
I’ve worked in healthcare for almost 20 years in various capacities. This is my tactic. When I first meet a new medical professional with whom I have had no prior interaction, I tell them that I speak medical terminology and there is no need to use generic terms. I do this as we are introducing ourselves. It saves them the time and effort of having to dumb it down and it saves me the frustration of being spoken to at a grade 8 level. Problem solved.
I’ve literally had patients who don’t know what a liver is or that they have one so really, as others have mentioned, even a grade 8 comprehension level is sometimes not low enough. In my work we try to get to grade 6. I try stuff out on my kid before patients.
See: Sexual education reform in Ontario.