Most of our patients are associates so they tend to understand medical terminology. However, each subgroup or discourse community in our hospital network has its own terms that are used daily that may be unfamiliar to others in a different department. 

Working in specialty pharmacy, it is like a foreign world to most people. We have our own lexis we use that we have to explain often. One example is PA, which means prior authorization, which also means approval from an insurance company to cover the cost of a medication. 

We also use multiple genres in communicating with each other. For a quick question, we might just walk over to someone at their desk. We might also send them a Teams message or email. If we want to explain something in more detail, we might call them on the phone. While none of these are unique to healthcare, we are able to tailor them to work for us very effectively.