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Your least favourite
buzz words

This article appeared in the Autumn 2002 edition of Short Words, the newsletter of Tim Albert Training. It was written by Tim Albert.

Medispeak - 2002 style
We invited 150 contacts to nominate their least favourite buzz words - with a deadline of 48 hours. About one third did so. This article summarises the main responses.

Suspicion about the real meaning of currently used NHS buzz words was one of the recurring themes of our e-mail survey.

Some felt that the health service has clearly hijacked parts of the English language and given them false meanings, or none.

'I absolutely hate the words proactive, cohesive, comprehensive, collaborative and systematic,' wrote Rhona Macdonald. 'Basically all the words you find in government documents that mean absolutely nothing'.

Jim McGuigan reported a strong aversion, dating from his sub-editing days, to domestic ambulators (they could only walk around their home) and community ambulators (they could walk to the shops).

David Pencheon identified the word stakeholder - 'a particularly nasty word. It implies we know who needs to be involved in a process, and how they should be involved. In reality it is a word that people use to state they haven't forgotten about the rest of the world but they have neither the inclination nor energy to think of exactly who else should be involved and how.'

In a similar vein Melanie Wynn Jones responded: ' I don't know whether you'd call it jargon, but the phrase I really hate is: There are a lot of issues around that… It's usually said by a manager when you have made a perfectly good case for treating a patient or setting up a service or confronting a problem or person. In other words: "No".'

The business world is as bad
'I hate the expression drill down when talking about analysis of information or data,' wrote Steve Carroll. 'It is usually said by an American and rather than meaning "a more detailed and meaningful analysis" it actually means: 'Let's produce lots more irrelevant facts and figures to avoid seeing the big picture'.

'It was drilling down that prevented President Bush and his senior managers from heeding the warnings about an upcoming terrorist threat.'

Janet Morgan also identified some phrases from over the pond:

think out of the box - used by non-creative people to mean be creative
push the envelope - I am not sure exactly what this one means

an issue - used by people who cannot bring themselves to admit that the thing in question might actually be a problem.

5.09.02