The Words We Use Matter
Words matter, and a recent Wall Street Journal article made it very clear that the language of healthcare providers, is indeed, important.1 In “Why Aren’t Doctors Better With Words?” the author Jim Sollisch gives an example of a 36-year-old woman who was told by her gynecologist that she had a “geriatric pregnancy,” much to the dismay of the expectant mother.
Sollisch suggests that medical professionals are not very good at marketing, euphemisms, or even simple politeness. Older people are told that their joints and discs are “degenerative.” If you are over 50 and have X-rays taken of your spine, you should be prepared to hear that you have “degenerative disc disease.” Yet, according to the Cleveland Clinic, this is often simply a condition in which the cushioning of the spine gradually wears away, a natural part of aging, not truly a disease. Can’t we do better?
Sollisch also recounts that when his wife experienced a complicated pregnancy, her obstetrician declared that she had an “incompetent cervix” and placed her on bed rest. She was deeply offended, and the sting of those words remained with her more than 30 years later.
Euphemisms are often used in other settings: used cars become “pre-owned” vehicles, and companies avoid saying employees are being fired by calling it “right-sizing.” What we call things matters, especially in medicine, where the goal is to improve and preserve an individual’s health. Sollisch is especially troubled by the word “geriatric,” which derives from the Greek word for old age, so why is it used in reference to a pregnant woman in her 30s?
My wife and I recently had a similar experience. She fell in our kitchen and broke her hip — or, as she jokingly prefers to say, “fractured her femur.” Within 24 hours of the accident, she underwent surgery in which a rod and two pins were placed in the bone. To say the least, the initial recovery period was brutal. After 2 months, she was only barely able to get around using a walker.
At her 60-day post-operative follow-up appointment, we were greeted by a physician assistant (PA) who, apparently without having reviewed my wife’s medical history, declared that she must have osteoporosis. We knew that was not the case. The PA then insisted that the likelihood of my wife ever walking again without major assistance was extremely poor. For only the third or fourth time in our 54-year marriage, my wife cried after the PA left the room. She was devastated.
The point is that someone with very limited knowledge of my wife’s history delivered words that, for many people, could have caused profound despair or even depression. To my wife’s credit, however, she became so determined to prove that prediction wrong that she doubled down on her rehabilitation exercises. Today, she is steadily recovering and can once again walk independently for short distances.
The lesson is simple: words matter, and how we use them matters even more.
Reference
- Sollisch J. Why aren’t doctors better with words? Wall Street Journal. April 12, 2026.
From Decisions in Dentistry. September/October 2026;12(2):9-12.
