Language is Safety: Words Can Hurt
The Dangerous Word List: Why lawyers think that language protects institutions is actually the language that may hurt patients.
Labor and delivery. ObGyn. They save lives every day. They also harm patients in ways that are preventable, traceable, and fixable, if you know where to look. This series shows you exactly where to look, and by the time you finish it, you will be a more informed clinician, a more empowered patient, and a more effective advocate for the care that every woman deserves.
The Legal Instinct That Gets It Backwards
There is a belief, deeply embedded in institutional risk management, that precise language creates liability. The reasoning goes like this: if you write a specific standard, you create something that can be violated and proven in court. If you write a vague standard, you create something that is harder to enforce and therefore harder to litigate against.
This reasoning is wrong. Not occasionally wrong. Systematically, demonstrably, expensively wrong.
The cases I have described in this series did not produce large malpractice settlements because the protocols were too specific. They produced large malpractice settlements because the protocols were too vague to prevent the harm and too vague to defend the institution afterward. Ambiguous language does not protect hospitals. It protects the individual clinician who can argue their behavior was consistent with a standard that meant nothing measurable. The institution, which wrote the standard and is responsible for enforcing it, pays the price.
Specific language is not a liability. It is the closest thing to a liability shield that a clinical protocol can provide. When a standard is clear, it can be followed. When it is followed, outcomes improve. When outcomes improve, litigation decreases. The math is not complicated.
What follows is a list of real words drawn from real society guidelines, including the 2009 Practice Bulletin on Induction of Labor and the 2025 Clinical Practice Guideline on Cervical Ripening, as well as obstetric guidelines more broadly.
These are not obscure documents. They are the foundational texts that govern labor and delivery practice across the United States. Every word has appeared in at least one of them. Every word has, at some point, been used as a shield by a clinician whose patient was harmed.
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