Victoria Macdonald at Channel 4 News had a good blog post on jargon in healthcare communications yesterday. She suggests that the political challenge of reorganising the NHS might be a lot simpler for managers and civil servants, if only they communicated with a suspicious public in something nearer plain English:
"Those speaking for change did not argue their case particularly well and at times seemed either exasperated or even patronising. I know they did not mean to come across that way but years of reporting the NHS has shown me that often those working in the health service do not know how to speak plain English and regularly fall back on jargon as well as making assumptions that people and patients know as much as they do about complicated statistical models of health care."
As well as helping to win arguments like these, taking clear communication more seriously could save lives. The approach of a senior manager at one of my employers — "if you can't convince them, confuse them" — seems, sadly, just as common in the healthcare sector as everywhere else.
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