Abstract
Research on English for nursing has emphasized communicative competence in clinical settings, yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the lexical characteristics of this communication. This study addressed this gap through a frequency-based corpus analysis of nurse dialogue in scripted medical dramas. Using transcripts from nursing-focused television series, the study examined the overall lexical characteristics of nurse interaction and compared vocabulary use in patient-directed versus interprofessional (nurse-staff) communication. Results indicated that both interaction types are predominantly composed of high-frequency general English. Patient-facing dialogue achieved slightly higher coverage with higher frequency vocabulary, though differences between interaction types were incremental rather than categorical. Examples from the corpus are provided to illustrate how nurses reformulate technical terminology using accessible, high-frequency language. The findings align with needs analyses and observational research on real-world nursing communication and suggest pedagogical value in emphasizing high-frequency vocabulary and reformulation skills in medical English instruction.
