Sharing my glossary thoughts

Re: Thanks, Remie. That is certainly one great way to approach it. -- tracymom
Posted by Pam McCarville , Sun, Dec 07, 2003, 19:08:22 Reply Top Forum


I thought I would share what I do, in hopes it gives you ideas for your situation of compiling glossaries for yourself and/or the MTs you share with.

I have individual glossaries that sort out words/phrases by category. These could probably be combined as a Base glossary, but I like having them separate for editing. I use these as Includes with a Base glossary compiled for each doctor I do (or sometimes all alone, if I am filling in for someone and have no samples to compile an individual glossary for a doctor.)

For example, DIAGNOSTICS has names of lab tests and names of conditions/diseases.

MISC has non-medical words/phrases such as cigarettes, discontinued, exercise and phrases such as "has had," "there is," "motor vehicle accident," "white female" and "Spanish-speaking."

MISC MEDICAL has common medical descriptive words such as benign, borderline, nontender, symptomatology and medical phrases such as "in no acute distress" and "physical therapy."

COMMANDS is my glossary for special functions, such as capping the previous word, highlighting one word or the entire previous sentence, inputting a hyphen (non-, re-), adding "s" or "ly" to a word, etc. (I love how IT now offers commands and lets me run macros.)

NAMES glossary has doctor/hospital names, local business names and job titles. There are often multiple entries for one doctor ... such as Dr. Smith, Dr. John Smith, John Smith, MD, and then an entry with address (such as for a letter.) I name these Smith1, Smith2, Smith3 or Smith4. I follow the same format, so Dr = 1, Dr + first name = 2, Name/Title = 3, Address = 4. (If John Smith, MD is the only entry, it is still named Smith3.) With hospitals, I use American Lutheran (AL1), American Lutheran Hospital (AL2), and as an address format (AL3). I have found certain local business names are mentioned often and obvious job titles are also an asset (such as full time student, engineer, construction worker, self-employed, etc.)

I also have glossaries for ANATOMY and MEDS.

By the way, when compiling glossaries in the past I had used settings based on the doctor's style, such as short or long sentences. Recently I read the post here about an experiment that Jon Knowles did. The difference in continuations using this method is amazing! You get more short phrases and many more continuations, without losing the longer phrases. My Productivity Gain percent has jumped 10-15 points on every doctor that I have done this for so far ... with one repetitive doctor now above 70%. Even the docs who ramble on and don't seem to repeat much are running close to 40% now (starting with 15 - 20% before). Maybe I am paying more attention now, but that is worth my time. ... and certainly is easier on these old fingers!

I have been using Instant Text for several years and it still continues to amaze me!

Pam McCarville


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