Importance of Language in Communicating Endometriosis Pain

New tools are needed to help women with endometriosis and their doctors to find effective ways to communicate and start appropriate investigative care, according to study.

Key Points

Highlights: 

• Language is very important for women with endometriosis to be able to communicate their pain to their doctor.

Importance:

• Better tools are needed for clinicians to be able to recognize endometriosis when women are describing their pain.

What's done here:

• An open-ended question survey for women with endometriosis and semi-structured telephone interviews with general practitioners was performed.
• The data was analyzed thematically.

Key results:

• According to both patients and doctors, the numeric rate scale was insufficient to communicate endometriosis pain.
• Describing the quality, location, and impact on the daily life of the pain can be more effective in communicating the pain according to both patients and doctors.
• Not all doctors recognized the most commonly used metaphors by patients to describe their pain as being related to endometriosis.

Limitations:

• The number of doctors who took part in this study is relatively small.

Lay Summary

Language is of great importance for women with endometriosis to communicate their pain to their doctor, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Global Women's Health. The study also found that additional tools are needed to help women and doctors find the most effective way to communicate the experience.

In order to examine the role of language in doctor-patient communication and what patients and doctors consider challenging and effective in endometriosis pain communication, Drs Stella Bullo and Annalise Weckesser from the Department of Languages, Information and Communications at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Centre for Social Care and Health-Related Research, at Birmingham City University in the UK conducted an open-ended question survey with 131 women with endometriosis and semi-structured telephone interviews with 11 general practitioners.

The results showed that both patients and doctors thought that the numeric rating scale was insufficient on its own for communicating endometriosis pain. Both patients and doctors also said that describing the quality, location, and impact on the daily life of the pain was a more effective way of communicating it.

In terms of commonly used metaphors by patients to describe their pain, not all doctors recognized them as indicative of possible endometriosis, and some thought that some of these expressions could indicate other diseases. This finding suggests that further research is needed into how metaphor can be effectively used to improve patient-doctor communication.

Research Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34870277/