IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v36y1993i8p987-998.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Medical slang and its functions

Author

Listed:
  • Coombs, Robert H.
  • Chopra, Sangeeta
  • Schenk, Debra R.
  • Yutan, Elaine

Abstract

Medical slang is analyzed in the developmental perspective of the physician's career. More than 300 terms gathered by ethnographic methods are classified by social categories: (1) the setting--various types of hospitals and facilities, (2) the players--care-givers and care-receivers, (3) the social processes-- patient admission, diagnosis, treatment and discharge, and (4) death and dying. Slang usage generally begins during the third year of medical school when students rotate among clinical services and peaks during the internship year. Male and female clinicians are similar in slang usage. Five psychosocial functions of medical slang are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Coombs, Robert H. & Chopra, Sangeeta & Schenk, Debra R. & Yutan, Elaine, 1993. "Medical slang and its functions," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 987-998, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:36:y:1993:i:8:p:987-998
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(93)90116-L
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:36:y:1993:i:8:p:987-998. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.