Does language ambiguity in clinical practice justify the introduction of standard terminology? An integrative review

Abstract

The introduction of standard terminology concerning patients' functioning will only be successful when clinical practice requires the aggregation and reuse of data from electronic patient records for different purposes, including multidisciplinary decision-making and research.

The Inter-Rater Consistency of Clinician Ratings of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Therapy Content

“…This broadly supports Dickerson, Davis and Staplin [15] who suggested that professional groups such as physicians and occupational therapists have a common language within their groups, but the same words do not have the same meaning between different professional groups. Similar observations were also made by Stallinga et al [16] who commented that language ambiguity allows different interpretations of the same word, with the term "trainability" having a different meaning to different professional groups. Therefore, a possible explanation for low levels of agreement for certain therapeutic techniques between different professional groups may be language ambiguity.…”

Semantics in active surveillance for men with localized prostate cancer — results of a modified Delphi consensus procedure

“…Many projects that aim to introduce standard terminology in clinical practice are unsuccessful, perhaps because standard terminology is rarely used in clinical practice 7 . A number of opportunities exist to consider how to most effectively implement standardized terminology for AS into clinical practice.…”

“…In these guidelines, AS is primarily recommended for patients with low-risk tumours; however, these guidelines contain various definitions of low-risk prostate cancer, as specified by different combinations of clinical criteria including clinical and pathological characteristics (such as tumour stage, serum PSA levels, biopsy Gleason score, tumour volume and serum PSA density). Furthermore, definitions of disease reclassification and progression differ among published guidelines and multiple criteria for initiation of curative treatment are proposed 6 .Problems resulting from the use of ambiguous language include hindered clinical decision making, particularly in multidisciplinary collaborations, and limited opportunities for research 7 . Moreover, such ambiguity has raised a barrier that hampers exchange of knowledge within and between fundamental domains of research and research groups 8 .…”

“…Problems resulting from the use of ambiguous language include hindered clinical decision making, particularly in multidisciplinary collaborations, and limited opportunities for research 7 . Moreover, such ambiguity has raised a barrier that hampers exchange of knowledge within and between fundamental domains of research and research groups 8 .…”

Evidence-Based Research in Nursing Science: A Reproducible Framework

“…employed computational or statistical analysis, the term "replicability" is interchangeably used with the term "reproducibility" without any justification or clarification (Plesser, 2018). However, the use of ambiguous terminology can be an impediment to the progress of science and can cause mass confusion and more discussions among scientists (Stallinga et al, 2015). According to the review of literature, the most common way to use the term of "reproducibility" was understanding it as an attempt to verify the data analysis of the study by using same data and same methods for yielding the same results (Plesser, 2018).…”