Medical Jargon Glossary for Patients

Situation	Terms to look up	Planning use
Reading a pathology or test report	Benign, biopsy, BRCA, malignant, negative	Check these words before the appointment. Mark any result whose meaning is unclear and bring it as a question.
Treatment and follow-up conversations	Impressive, remission	Do not rely on the everyday tone of a word. Ask what it means for your own situation.
Prescription labels and clinical notes	PRN and other abbreviations	Ask what each abbreviation stands for. Abbreviations and acronyms are among the most common forms of jargon.

The terms in this table draw on the RCOG A-Z of medical terms and a study of how patients understand medical jargon.

Medical terminology for patients falls into three groups: abbreviations, technical words, and everyday words that mean something different in medicine. Look up any unfamiliar term before you agree to a plan.

This glossary is grouped by the situation in which a term usually turns up, with a plain definition, where you may meet it and a follow-up question for each. For the wider skill of asking, see how to speak up for yourself at the doctor.

Terms in pathology and test reports

Reports are where jargon is densest, because they are written for other clinicians. Cleveland Clinic notes that a term may be seen on a report or in paperwork as well as heard from the care team, so the same word can reach you in writing before anyone explains it. The entries below run alphabetically.

Benign

Benign describes a growth or finding that is not cancer. It often appears in the diagnosis line of a pathology report. The word reassures, but it does not tell you whether anything further is planned.

Ask: Does benign mean I need no treatment, or will this area be monitored?

Biopsy

A biopsy is the taking of a small sample of tissue for examination, according to the RCOG glossary. The pathology report is the written result of that examination, so the two words often arrive in the same conversation.

Ask: When will the biopsy result be ready, and who will explain the pathology report to me?

BRCA

BRCA is an abbreviation for the BReast CAncer gene, as the RCOG glossary explains. You may see it in family history notes or in a genetic test result.

Ask: What does this gene result mean for my own care, and does it affect anyone in my family?

Malignant

Malignant describes a growth that is cancer. It is the counterpart to benign, and the two words together answer the most common question patients bring to a pathology report. Because the stakes are high, read the full sentence around the word rather than only the one term.

A computer-generated image of cell-like shapes. It is an illustration, not a photograph of a patient or report.

Ask: Is the finding on my report benign or malignant, and what is the next step in either case?

Negative

In medicine, negative can have a different or even opposite meaning from everyday speech. For a screening test, negative means the test did not find the condition, which is the favourable outcome. In the study of patient understanding of jargon, 207 of 215 participants (96%) knew that a negative cancer screening result meant no cancer. Even so, the word is a trap on other results, so confirm which direction is good.

Ask: Is a negative result good news for this particular test?

Terms during treatment and follow-up

Words in this group sound ordinary, which makes them easy to misread. Cleveland Clinic points out that the same word can carry a different meaning in a medical setting than the one you would hear elsewhere.

Impressive

Impressive is a tone word that clinicians may use about imaging, and it is not praise. In the same study, only 44 of 215 participants (21%) correctly understood that a clinician calling their radiography impressive was generally bad news. If a scan or image is described with a positive-sounding adjective, do not take it as reassurance.

Ask: Is that good or bad news for me, and what does it change about my plan?

Remission

Remission generally means that the signs of a disease have lessened or gone. It is a word about current status, so the more useful details are how it was measured and what happens next.

Ask: What kind of remission is this, and what follow-up checks will keep an eye on it?

Abbreviations on prescriptions and notes

Technical terminology, abbreviations and acronyms are the most commonly used forms of jargon, according to the study above. Cleveland Clinic also describes jargon as words, phrases, abbreviations or acronyms that healthcare workers use without thinking. That answers the question of which abbreviations show up in your notes only in part: the set is large and varies by specialty, so the practical habit is to ask about each one you cannot decode. BRCA, covered above, is one example, and PRN is another.

PRN

PRN on a prescription label means the medicine is taken as needed rather than on a fixed schedule. The label or medication list should still say what you are treating, how much to take and any limit between doses, and if it does not, ask.

Blister packs of medication. No prescription label or abbreviation is visible in this photo.

Cleveland Clinic advises that you make sure you know why you are taking each medication. For a PRN medicine, that reason is what tells you when it is time to use it.

Ask: What symptom should lead me to take this PRN medicine, and what should I do if it does not help?

Getting a term explained during the visit

The biggest thing a patient can do, in Cleveland Clinic’s words, is ask. You do not need to know the vocabulary to ask well, and a short plain request is usually enough.

A generic phone photo: the screen shows a social media login, not a health glossary. Phones are handy for quick lookups, but use a trusted medical reference.

Ask for the plain version. The study found that a nonjargon phrase was understood significantly better than the jargon version, so requesting plain wording is a reasonable, effective ask.
Ask what it means for you. Cleveland Clinic suggests asking the clinician to explain what a lab result or diagnosis means for you individually.
Ask for another pass. You can ask the clinician to repeat what was said, say it more slowly or put it another way.
Write the term down. Bringing a notebook lets you record words as they come up and review them later.

If you want to keep the explanation for later, check is it legal to record a doctor visit before you start a recording.

A clinician and patient reviewing information together on a tablet during a visit.

Looking terms up afterwards

A notebook list becomes useful once you can check each word against a reliable reference. The RCOG describes its alphabetical list as explanations of medical words you may come across, which makes it a sensible first stop for a term from your notes. Treat any lookup as preparation for a question, not a replacement for one, because a glossary cannot tell you what a result means in your case.

For the larger task of reading entire documents, how to read your medical records shows how the terms above fit into a full report.

Frequently asked questions

Question	Answer
Where can I find an alphabetical list of medical words?	The RCOG A-Z of medical terms lists explanations of words patients may come across.
Why does an ordinary word sound different at the clinic?	Cleveland Clinic explains that words can carry a different meaning in a medical context than they would elsewhere, so confirm the clinical meaning.
Does jargon only mean long technical words?	No. It also includes abbreviations and acronyms, which the jargon study found to be among the most common forms.
Why should I ask about the reason for each medicine?	Cleveland Clinic advises knowing why you take each medication, which also helps you make sense of labels such as PRN.