Doctors urged to write patient letters in ‘plain English’

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges is encouraging doctors to adopt a new policy of writing letters that are easier for patients to understand.

Arguing that correspondence too often contains complex medical jargon rather than plain and simple English, the Please Write to Me initiative is aimed mainly at doctors working in outpatient clinics, although it is best practice for all clinicians who need to write clinical letters.

Advising on aspects such as the tone of the letter, avoiding stigmatised words and softening the impact of potentially sensitive information by using a more non-committal style, the initiative pinpoints particular medical words which could more appropriately be written in ‘plain English’.

This includes using ‘children’ instead of ‘paediatric’, ‘lung’ instead of ‘pulmonary’, ‘brain’ instead of ‘cerebral’, ‘swelling’ instead of ‘oedema’ and ‘long-term’ rather than ‘chronic’.

Additionally, doctors are being asked to write directly to patients rather than sending them a copy of a letter penned to their GP, in order to help avoid blunders or offence caused by writing about patients in the third person.

Doctors should also consider telephoning the patients rather than breaking bad news in the letter if test results are potentially upsetting, the academy says.