About the language of Hungarian discharge reports

Abstract

Concerning use of terminological systems translated to any particular language or computer assisted translation of patient records the daily medical language has to be taken into account rather than the pure academic language. The aim of this study to investigate the language of the diagnosis of the Hungarian hospital discharge reports. Word of collection of discharge diagnoses were categorised according to the language and form (normal words, abbreviations, acronyms). It was found that Latin is still a dominant, but the language is rather a mixture, where local jargon, non standardised abbreviations occur frequently. Some signs show, that discharge reports are not used primarily as a tool of communication of physicians, rather serve local administrative purposes.