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[Do doctors speak a different language? The case of 'patient' without an article]
Background:
In medical speech and writing, the article before ‘patient’ is often omitted, while this would be ungrammatical in Standard Dutch.
Aim:
To investigate how and when the article is omitted in medical Dutch.
Method:
An online questionnaire was distributed among individuals with a medical background.
Results:
85 respondents participated in this study. The participants showed a strong preference to omit the definite article (‘the’) befor the word ‘patient’ and related words. This phenomenon seemed independent of the function of the word in the sentence, or of the sentence construction. However, the indefinite article (‘a’) was not omitted in the same situations.
Conclusion:
Doctors speak a different language, namely a variety of Standard Dutch in which the omission of the definite article befor ‘patient’ is preferred. We conclude that this phenomenon can be explained by recognizing ‘patient’ as a substitute for the name of the patient.
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