Abstract
Interprofessional communication depends largely on the specialist's ability to assess and make allowance for the cross-cultural distance between himself and his audience. This distance is composed mainly of differences in basic preoccupations, assumptions, purposes, methods, and terminologies. The most effective bridges consist of generalizations to which a minimum number of qualifications are applied, and in which jargon and clutter are near zero. The general equation of the first degree for the effectiveness of communication when the message is technical is as follows: