MDS Alert

Using industry lingo means you're leaving a lot of information to interpretation.

Every industry has its own inside language. Calling procedures or paperwork by acronyms or letter combinations is a great way to improve and speed up internal communications. But when you start slinging those terms at your residents, you could be leaving them in the dark.

You're not helping your residents if they don't understand you. Follow these tips to ensure that you're speaking customer-speak and not corporate jargon:

• Eliminate industry-specific technical jargon from your speech patterns.
• Refer to your procedures by their full names and not their acronyms.
• Refer to other departments by their full names and not their corporate abbreviations. Your resident might not know what you mean if you tell her that you'll transfer her to the RN. But, she'll understand better if you tell her that you'll transfer her to your nurse.
• If you work for a government agency, refer to other government agencies by their full names instead of using acronyms that residents may not recognize (such as, CMS versus Medicare).
• Explain everything in plain language instead of quoting agency policies or regulations.
• Verify with your residents that they understand by asking if they have any questions about what you just discussed.