Identifying and classifying medical jargon through analysis of recorded standardized patient encounters

•Medical jargon avoidance is an essential component of communication curriculum.•Methods to identify jargon exist but have not been used in curricula.•We used an iterative process to objectively identify jargon.•Jargon was classified into words with or without plain language alternatives.•This categorization enables development of a standardized communication curriculum. Learning effective communication, particularly jargon avoidance, is important for medical training. Standardized methods exist to identify jargon but there is room to further refine those methods to define medical jargon and expand categorization. This project aims to classify jargon words as having a plain language alternative or not, to both standardize the definition of jargon and as a foundation for teaching jargon avoidance. We analyzed 123 transcribed encounters between standardized patients and medical students to quantify and categorize medical jargon using a stepwise process based on published literature. This process eliminated common words (based on New Dale-Chall list) without distinct medical meaning. Uncommon words and words with distinct medical meanings found in Stedman’s Medical Dictionary were considered jargon. Jargon words were cross-referenced with the Plain Language Thesaurus to identify plain language alternatives. This process identified 310 jargon words, 102 with plain language alternative from the 123 encounters. We objectively classified jargon into distinct categories with a novel focus on jargon words with and without plain language alternatives. This objective classification system serves as an important step in gaining a comprehensive understanding of jargon use which is essential to improving and teaching communication skills.