Posted on 07/08/2013 9:16:54 PM PDT by SovereignVA
MILWAUKEE (WITI) — More and more of your medical records are being made available online. But do you know what’s in those records? Do you understand what your doctors mean when they use certain terms? This FOX6 investigation could help you in the future.
In 2009, Andrea Christian lost a child. ”I did at one point see the heartbeat and then you don`t see it,” she remembers.
“It hits you all at once.”
She recently changed doctors and requested her medical records. She couldn’t believe what she read.
“I just felt like they had ignored that I had lost a child,” Christian says.
The doctor had called her miscarriage an abortion.
“I’ve had a lot of stress just thinking about this,” Christian explains. ”That’s not what happened to me. I did not have an abortion. I had a miscarriage.”
She tried to get her records changed, but the hospital refused, writing her a letter. It said “health professionals use the terms miscarriage and abortion synonymously.”
Medical professionals say sometimes the word “spontaneous” will be written before the word “abortion” to indicate a miscarriage. The words “elective abortion” mean a patient chose the surgical procedure.
(Excerpt) Read more at fox6now.com ...
I find the article's commentary on the apparent callousness of accepted medical terminology interesting, particularly:
"...in some cases, doctors say they are now being more careful about what they put in your chart, to avoid hurt feelings caused by medical terminology."
This can be taken any number of ways. It's a bad idea to put anything in a chart that someone could be offended over in a courtroom, or the court of public opinion - online (fabricated or not) reviews. There's ways of getting around formal chart entries, such as an alert that pops up when the chart is accessed that says "personal hygiene a sensitive topic", but isn't technically part of the medical record for anyone but the staff to see.
But I digress.
Can a pro-life doctor reserve the word "abortion" for the murder of pre-born human beings, or do legal medical regulations require them to do otherwise?
The article's argument that a patient's objection might be based upon ignorance or a misunderstanding of terminology is insulting.
I am saddened to find that the word "abortion" appears to be medically accepted as interchangeable with "miscarriage." I have seen "abortion" euphemistically referred to as [deliberately] "induced miscarriage", and it nauseates me.
Your thoughts?
If the Philippines want to become the mecca of medical tourism, they need to explicitly guarantee confidentiality of medical records and they’ll make a killing.
Waaaaay back when I was still “in production,” they called a miscarriage a “spontanious abortion.”
we stil refer to almost having a miscarriage as a “threatened miscarriage”; however spontaneous abortion is used routinely to describe an actual miscarriage. Omitting the spontaneous aspect just seems lazy imo.
My thought is that they are distinct, and that it matters, because we know the government and the abortion lobby will try to use these numbers in some way to support their agenda. Who knows but that they may try to portray women who have had a miscarriage, as supporting abortion?
I sympathize with the lady. We lost one.
People actually OFFENDED by this need to grow up.... Its a medical term known as a “Spontaneous Abortion”. They can also be referred to as a fetal demise, depending on the circumstances..... I think. ( before becoming a Nurse Practitioner, my wife used to be an RN in OBGYN)
It’s not to be taken personally — it’s a medical record. However, it’s obviously a sensitive topic, whichever side of the aisle the patient is on. Accuracy and specificity are required in any medical document, and I don’t think the unqualified term “abortion” is appropriate.
Technically, if a fetus is not carried to term, it’s aborted. Part of a woman’s obstetrical history includes the number of times she’s been pregnant, the number of deliveries, number of abortions (of any kind), and how many live births. Such information should always be obtained with a degree of sensitivity in mind.
The words that jumped out at me were “morbidly obese”. Sounds like she has bigger problems to worry about.
The same medical terminology can be used for a D&C....if it aborts a pregnancy...
So to speak. ;-)
Actually, it’s even worse than that. The terms are applied even after a full-term badly botched child-birth. I re-wrote a section of the document I was supposed to sign that originally read “removed the effects of pregnancy,” which would have implied abortion, to read “removed the effects of child-birth.” The obgyn, though he delivered a healthy baby, had failed to remove all the after-birth, so the then-necessary D&C was hardly the proximate result of mere pregnancy!
I think you need to consider the possibility that such records might be leaked and used against people.
It might not matter to the average family, but If someone were in an important position this misleading information could easily be used to destroy someone's reputation.
SA (spontaneous abortion) was acceptable usage. Elective Abortion rare.
But it’s the Elective abortion industry who took the usage, I’m sure.
Here we go again. I guess niggardly isn’t the only word that is not pc.
Words matter to a broken heart.
bump
There are 4 types of abortion and abortion is a medical term. Most women use the term miscarriage but that is a lay mans term.....You can have an inevitable abortion which means you are going to spontaneous abort. or a threatened abortion which usually means a pregnancy is in danger of an abort..... therapeutic abortion.... which is what most people call abortion..Cannot remember the other type and I’d have to dig out my nursing bible and its too late at night...
you are 100% right...but if one person or 100 people are offended, lets just change that offensive word so she can feel better-....she is not stupid, but is really ignorant in the truest sense of the word. Wording is the reason pro abortion people got offended when they were called anti life. Politically correct be dammed. Its an abortion and if someone is offended tough noggies, life is hard...
Just took a year-long medical coding class.
You wouldn’t believe the horrible cr@p-storm drs have to go through. Heck there’s multiple codes for various abortions. Failed abortion gets a code, spontaneous abortion gets a code, successful abortion.......
And it hasn’t really even kicked in yet. Learned enough terminology and that I don’t want to be involved.
the technical term for an early miscarriage is an “abortion”.
What laypeople call an “abortion” is called an “induced abortion”.
If it occurs later than 12 weeks, it is called a second trimester abortion.
If the miscarriage comes after viability, it is called premature labor.
To confuse matters, in most early miscarriages, in the first 6 to 8 weeks, there is no fetus (which is why the pregnancy spontaneously ended itself).
and if the baby dies or never forms, but you don’t pass the fetal sac, it is called a “missed abortion”.
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