Terminological Problems and Information Missing in Descriptions of Injuries in the Hungarian Forensic Medical Discourse

Introduction: In Hungary, the official template of a Medical Diagnostic Report is filled in by traumatologists or GPs on the occasion of assaults and accidents. It is a vitally important document in forensic medicine, as only on the basis of this document are forensic experts able to assess injuries. However, in numerous cases forensic examiners are not able to reconstruct injuries because of important information missing or terminology not used in the appropriate way. The research aims at comparing descriptions of injuries with those given by forensic experts and showing which problems may impair understanding.
Material and method: The following corpus-based study was conducted on 343 authentic Medical Diagnostic Reports from different forensic institutions and the related expert opinions. The terminology of the descriptions was compared with that of the expert opinions and the essential pieces of information were processed by statistical analysis.
Results: The analysis showed that 84% of the MDRs did not give the exact time of medical care and 59% if the patient had consumed alcohol. The injuries were arranged according to body parts, and 27% of them neglected the side aspect of the location. Because of terminological problems 5.6% of the injuries were regarded as only partly assessable and 15% as not assessable by the forensic expert.
Discussions: The analysis showed that the sixth part of the MDRs was ambiguous due to inappropriate and missing information.
Conclusions: Terminology could be unified and the template optimised using the results of the current study.
Keywords: terminology, forensic medicine, corpus analysis, discourse community, genre analysis