I warn you that, herein, I’m using linguistics in a very broad sense.
My father, Melvin, taught me to take blood pressure. The first rule in his scheme was an adamant: No talking.
Melvin sensitized me to the fact that conversation often affects blood pressure. And although conversation might put the patient at ease to allow for an accurate reading, it, more often, irritates the patient to excite elevation.
Of the many doctor appointments wherein my pressure read high amidst incessant jabber by the nurse or aide, I once remember chiding the technician that to get a reasonable reading there needed to be no conversation. He countered with, “But you weren’t talking. Only I was.”
What this technician did not appreciate—nor do most medical people, apparently—is that merely hearing a voice can increase blood pressure.
Almost all people struggle to a greater or lesser degree with phonics perception. My deficit in this area is particularly severe. And because of it, I could have never made a career as a practicing doctor.
My hearing—with the exception of losing some of my upper frequency perception due to shooting pistols as a teenager—is good. But I struggle to discriminate phonics that form words. I am panicking to formulate a speaker’s meaning in his earlier phrases as that speaker has progressed on to his later phrases. This handicap has always hindered me in scholastic lectures as well as in social conversations.
Everyone is challenged with this to some degree—especially when listening to someone in a foreign tongue or strange accent—but with me it is severe. This makes me a poor listener even when I’m actively striving to understand someone. This makes me tense and impatient and raises my blood pressure. And even the sound of someone’s idle chatter has significant subliminal effect on me.
And my handicap is worsened when talking by phone as I am unduly dependent on watching a speaker’s lips and eyes. And, when in person, my study leads to unintended consequences as the speaker grows uncomfortable with my intense focus on his face. Of course, the overboard masking since the beginning of the recent pandemic has exacerbated my frustration.
If a medical professional intends to properly measure blood pressure, the first thing to prepare is the environment for peace and quiet and security. Once the patient is then comfortably seated and relaxed in this space, the cuff is applied (but not inflated) and the technician instructs the patient to sit calmly, if possible, for several minutes WITH NO TALKING to anyone (or interaction with cell phone, etc.*). Note that the cuff must be applied BEFORE a two-minute (or more) interval of no contact (verbal or physical) [The technician might leave the room and return.]. Then the attendant is to approach the patient—WITH NO TALKING or interaction with anyone or anything—and take the reading. [Again, this requires some explanation and prepping of the patient to the sequence.]
[*There must be no viewer boxes on the wall to play advertisements. Hitting on a frightened patient—effectively trapped in an exam room (or in a waiting room)—to sell drugs and medical devices is despicable! Ideally, the walls of the exam room should be blank.]
The proper prep for blood pressure measurement necessarily requires time that the medical industry cannot often allow for. In fact, this non-allowance fosters the supposed need to prescribe medications that are often unnecessary. [Please note the italics.]
By various social rules, it is rude to talk or to make other distractions during certain events. Some of these are well known and observed. Most observe the respect to be afforded during a prayer or other religious events. Most know to remain quiet during an orchestra performance, an opera, a ballet, a funeral, a yoga class, during meditation, in a dojo, or in a library. And a few people know that social conversation is verboten during exercise [I have written about this profusely.]. But this seems to be a lost part of the art of performing the obligatory vitals at the outset of every doctor visit.
My silent thoughts when a jabbering medical technician enters the exam room to take my blood pressure are:
Shut the F up!
Don’t you know better than to talk when doing this test?
Does your boss, the doctor, know any better about the effect of conversation on blood pressure (and pulse)? If so, does your boss stipulate that you record the readings in the format of “150/95 @ 100 WC?” … as WC indicates with conversation.
Did you not learn rule #1 in school? Are the medical and nursing school instructors this ignorant as well?
I went through the arduous process of making the appointment, clearing my calendar, negotiating heavy traffic and putting my wife and me and our car at risk, spending hours completing your intrusive questionnaires, enduring your rules to wear a worthless mask that muzzles my communication and lowers my oximeter reading when I’m borderline COPD and my wife is asthmatic, making me arrive early for the appointment… making me wait 30-90 minutes in the reception room and another 15-45 minutes in the exam room, and you can’t or won’t devote the time to properly measure my vitals?… Outrageous!
I commonly encounter instructionals detailing mistakes to avoid when measuring blood pressure that make no mention of the need to avoid talk.