health information and using "pee", "poop", etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I used to work as a medical editor and this was an ongoing controversy at my work. There seems like there should be a word in between pooping and evacuation of the bowel but we never settled on it.

What about defecating?

Nobody likes that. The physicians wanted "passing stool." I guess that is the med school approved language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems like this forum gets questions pretty often with lab results etc. asking "what does this mean?" but then when medical literature is written this way, with words like "pee", it comes off as patronizing to the educated DCUMer. It's hard to straddle that line between "written for a medical professional" and "written for the 100 IQ average person".

That's not what they are typically asking. The subtext is usually, tell me why this test result doesn't mean what I think it means based on my five second Google search.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You should read the public information coming out from the UK, Australia and NZ. They use words like poo, tummy and bottom.

https://service-manual.nhs.uk/content/a-to-z-of-nhs-health-writing

Although the doctor above talks about many patients having a 5th grade reading level, for the rest of us, this kind of infantile language is jarring.

How is pee and poop jarring in a online article that your average person is looking up for the causes of a condition?

Because I read articles about my condition in medical journal that even my PCP doesn't get around to reading, so I don't enjoy being spoken to as if I am 10 or 11 years old.

How distressing for you that the articles designed for the masses assaulted your eyes this way. I hope you have the means to recover.

[Anonymous]

I work in GI. A frequent interaction: “How often do you have a bowel movement?” (No answer) “How often do you have a bowel movement?” (No answer) “How often do you poop?” (Answer). I always start with bowel movement and always go to poop on 3rd try.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work in GI. A frequent interaction: “How often do you have a bowel movement?” (No answer) “How often do you have a bowel movement?” (No answer) “How often do you poop?” (Answer). I always start with bowel movement and always go to poop on 3rd try.

Honestly, as long as the medical professionals are getting the information they need, I think people (not you, PP!) need to be less hung up on the specific word choice.

My mother was baffling one of her doctors for ages because she insisted on saying she "Had to get up at night" [lengthy explanation of further word choices omitted here, but her doctor's assumption was reasonable], and her doctor thought she was getting up to put on more ointment. But no, she was getting up to urinate. Only she couldn't bring herself to say urinate or pee.

People in the Pets forum are always talking about their pets "going to the bathroom" or "doing their business." The pets are doing neither.

Then there are the people who pride themselves on using the correct word, only they're saying "vagina" when they mean "vulva"

[Anonymous]

I'd guess that there is nobody who doesn't know what pee and poop mean, so those seem to be the terms that make the most sense for all audiences, including children.