Medical terminology helps health care professionals to achieve efficient communication with each other, but causes difficulties when health care professionals try to inform patients and their loved ones about their conditions. This report examines naturally-occurring telephone conversations between information specialists of the Cancer Information Service (CIS) and callers who seek medical information. We describe four formats for bringing medical terminology to consciousness: asking questions as asides, parenthetical clarification, responding to patient difficulties, and using terms to refer to a caller's description. Information specialists use a variety of conversational devices to bring medical terms into these telephone encounters.
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