Title | Hedging their mets: the use of uncertainty terms in clinical documents and its potential implications when sharing the documents with patients. |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2012 |
Authors | Hanauer, DA, Liu, Y, Mei, Q, Manion, FJ, Balis, UJ, Zheng, K |
Journal | AMIA Annu Symp Proc |
Volume | 2012 |
Pagination | 321-30 |
Date Published | 2012 |
ISSN | 1942-597X |
Keywords | Electronic Health Records, Humans, Language, Medical Records Systems, Computerized, Natural Language Processing, Patient Access to Records, Physicians |
Abstract | In this study, we quantified the use of uncertainty expressions, referred to as 'hedge' phrases, among a corpus of 100,000 clinical documents retrieved from our institution's electronic health record system. The frequency of each hedge phrase appearing in the corpus was characterized across document types and clinical departments. We also used a natural language processing tool to identify clinical concepts that were spatially, and potentially semantically, associated with the hedge phrases identified. The objective was to delineate the prevalence of hedge phrase usage in clinical documentation which may have a profound impact on patient care and provider-patient communication, and may become a source of unintended consequences when such documents are made directly accessible to patients via patient portals. |
Alternate Journal | AMIA Annu Symp Proc |
PubMed ID | 23304302 |
PubMed Central ID | PMC3540426 |
Grant List | CA46592 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States HHSN276201000032C / / PHS HHS / United States UL1RR024986 / RR / NCRR NIH HHS / United States |
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Cancer Institutes of
Health under Award Number P30CA046592. The content is solely the responsibility
of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the
National Institutes of Health.
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Cancer Institutes of
Health under Award Number P30CA046592 by the use of the following Cancer Center
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