Confusing Words: Prognosis (noun) and Diagnosis (noun).
Meaning:
Prognosis (the likely course of a medical condition.)
Diagnosis (the identification of the nature of an illness or other problem by examination of the symptoms.)
Prognosis vs Diagnosis Clarification: Prognosis and diagnosis are totally different terms in terms of their meanings.
Prognosis vs Diagnosis – What is the Difference, Definition & Meaning?
Word choice may confuse many writers and speakers as well.
Medical field is known to have a very difficult vocabulary. Apart from the medical specialists, every person may not be able to remember hundreds of difficult medical terms.
As you can see that both prognosis and diagnosis are a few letters apart.
Though, they are related to the same field but you cannot use them interchangeably. Prognosis and diagnosis are totally different terms in terms of their meanings. Let me define these terms one by one.
Prognosis
The word ‘prognosis’ is used as a noun within a sentence. It is used to refer to a medical forecast or an opinion, usually by a doctor, about an illness or a medical condition.
1. The doctors are not willing to make a prognosis for this type of serious illness.
2. The family was very upset to hear a very weak prognosis from specialists.
3. [After a poor prognosis for recovery from her doctor following her 1990 bus accident] I said if it is up to me, I’m going to be OK. (Gloria Estefan)
Diagnosis
Like prognosis, diagnosis is also used as a noun within a sentence. It is used to refer to an act of discovery or an identification of an illness by examining the nature of the disease i.e. the symptoms. This term is only used in the field of medical.
Let us find out how you can use this term within sentences.
1. The doctors were not telling me the diagnosis of my disease.
2. She should be careful now; give her healthy and light foods because her final diagnosis is pneumonia.
3. If you can make the diagnosis, the treatment is easy and the damage can be reversed. But making the diagnosis is tricky. (Ralph Green)
Check Out: The Difference Between Illusion and Delusion.
Did You Get The Difference?
From the above discussion, you got to know that both prognosis and diagnosis are the terms that are related to the fields of medical or psychology.
However, people also use these terms outside the medical field as well. For instance, prognosis is synonymous with forecast, prediction, or prophecy. Diagnosis, on the other hand, is synonymous with discovery, recognition, or detection.
Prognosis = Prediction
Diagnosis = Identification
What Did You Learn?
Do not mix up the two medical terms ‘prognosis’ and ‘diagnosis’ as, both have totally different meanings from each other.
Though both of these terms are used to refer to a condition like disease but prognosis is the prediction of that disease and diagnosis is the detection of the disease.