But i’m a hospital medical interpreter who also translates discharge summaries, and I’m looking for a dependable source to check plain-language equivalents (e.g., “hypertension” → “high blood pressure”) without compromising accuracy or ethics. In our cardiology clinic in Queens on Tuesdays at 8 a.m., I’ve been building a bilingual glossary in Termbase.io, but I need resources that prioritize informed consent and readability — what do you use to validate patient-facing wording?
On discharge summaries I rely on CDC’s Everyday Words for Public Health (https://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/developmaterials/plainlanguage.html) and keep a “teach-back” line in my Termbase entries so the plain version is ready for clinic use. It’s saved me from turning “myocardial infarction” into a “heart hiccup.” Small caveat: for safety-critical terms like “heart failure,” I run the plain phrasing past the cardiology PA before I lock it.
And for cardiology terms, I cross-check against MedlinePlus and the AHA Health Topics; if MedlinePlus uses “high blood pressure” for “hypertension,” I mirror that in my plain-language column (https://medlineplus.gov/). Small caveat: I keep the medical term on first mention — hypertension [high blood pressure] — and skip simplifying when nuance matters (e.g., atrial fibrillation). Building on @martin_c74, I add a quick teach-back line to test clarity — it’s like adding subtitles, not rewriting the script.
I keep the University of Michigan Plain Language Medical Dictionary bookmarked for quick checks (https://guides.lib.umich.edu/healthliteracy/plmd), and if a cardiology term isn’t listed or feels off, I sanity-check phrasing against the Healthwise patient-education library in Epic before saving it to Termbase. It’s a bit US‑centric, so I defer to your clinic’s preferred phrasing if there’s a clash.