Jan 23
Acronymous
A cutting from my Mum that she found in the Guardian some time ago. I knew some of these, but a number of them were new and made me laugh. Most medical readers will recognise some or all, but for the rest of you:
Doctors’ Notes Translated:
UBI: Unexplained Beer Injury
CTD: Circling The Drain
NFN: Normal For Norfolk
LOBNH: Lights On But Nobody Home
GPO: Good for Parts Only
GLM: Good-Looking Mum
TFTB: Too Fat To Breathe
GOK: God Only Knows
TEETH: Tried Everything Else, Try Homeopathy
TLR: Two Legged Rat (a patient undergoing extreme or experimental treatment)
DBI: DirtBag Index (number of tattoos x number of missing teeth = estimated period in days since patient’s last shower)
FLK: Funny Looking Kid
NQR: Not Quite Right
TUBE: Totally Unnecessary Breast Exam
Freud Squad: Psychiatric Department
Rear Admiral: Proctologist
Code Brown: Faecal Incontinence Emergency
Gasser: Anaesthetist
Cheerioma: Terminal Cancer
Dump: To arrange for a patient who should probably attend your service to be seen by another service
Knuckledragger: Orthopaedist
Rule of Five: If more than five of the patient’s orifices are obscured by tubing, he has no chance.
Donor-cycle: Motorbike
Cock Doc: Urologist
Baby Catcher: Obstetrician
Foreverectomy: A surgical procedure that takes a long time
Plumbum oscillans: Malingerer.
Any more?
January 23rd, 2010 at 6:17 pm
One of my transplant colleagues from your side of the pond taught me these two:
WOMBAT: Waste Of Money, Bed, And Time.
TF-BUNDY (pronounced “tee-eff-bundee”): Totally [screwed], But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet.
Apparently these were actually used in physician notes. Over here no one would dare, since such things would result in impossible-to-win litigation, even when true.
January 23rd, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Also,
P cubed: Piss Poor Protoplasm
Flea: Internist (always drawing blood)
And, the Harriet Lane Handbook of Pediatrics has always listed a normal value for “serum porcelain”, presumably to determine if the patient is a crock.
But I’ve never seen this stuff actually in the patient chart, just verbally in the patient handover.
January 23rd, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Is FUBAR a medical term?
And one to go with FLK.
GLM - Good Looking Mum.
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:19 pm
bus on a rush = GLF.
January 24th, 2010 at 1:26 am
I’ll add…
SNAFU, Situation Normal, All Fucked Up
TMB - Too Many Birthdays
and
LSL the only ECG I can read, Little Squiggly Lines
January 24th, 2010 at 4:58 am
The best story I’ve heard about medical abbreviations was a doctor who’d had enough of a patient, and wrote “TTFO” or “Told To Leave In A Nice Way.” in his patient records.
For whatever reason, the doctor ended up in court and was questioned by the defence lawyer as to what TTFO stood for - without taking a second to think the doctor replied “To Take Fluids Orally”
January 24th, 2010 at 10:13 am
PFO = Pissed and Fell Over
January 24th, 2010 at 10:45 am
In vetworld, the apocryphal abbreviation is DMSO - Dog more sense than owner. (Or dimethyl sulphoxide your honour, a drug never used in general practice.)
Allegedly, in Cumbria, HEFT is like FUBAR and stands for Hypo Every *Goshdarn* Thing
January 24th, 2010 at 10:54 am
FDGB - Fall Down Go Boom.
AGA - Acute Gravity Attack (fell over)
Dagenham - (Three Stops Beyond Barking) Severely disturbed
Bodysnatchers: Air Ambulance Crew
Leeches: Phlebotomists
January 24th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Oscillating plumbitis is the OH version (or maybe the English/Southern version) of Plumbum oscillans
E17 - next stop Barking
January 24th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
the one I see on another blog that I like is “DOAB” - drunk on a bus. Which you never moan about, incidentally. Don’t Edinburgh paramedics get called out to sleepy drunks on buses?
These lists always remind me of the Simpsons episode where the police chief confesses to mixing up DUI and DOA. Oops.
January 24th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
A more local version of NFN is NFF - normal for Fife. The explanation is that the Tay bridge and the Forth bridge weren’t built until the late 1800s so the gene pool in Fife was fairly small! I use “joiner” for orthopaedic surgeon. Orthopods themselves call general surgeons “gibblet surgeons” because they operate on the bits that no one else wants.
January 24th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
We have lots of FLKs here, and I once had an ER colleague, of all people, offended by our use of the term!
January 24th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
Then there’s PFO, Pissed Fell Over, PGT, Pissed Got Thumped, or two small rectangles drawn for as thick as two short planks…
January 24th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
The patient tracking board of the casualty department I used to run had it’s fair share of GP,FO next to patient’s names - Got Pissed, Fell Over.
NFI or Normal For Ilkeston covered a very wide range.
January 24th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Oh,and LOB or Load of Bollocks was a popular diagnostic choice as well
January 25th, 2010 at 1:30 am
The FLK one was taught to us by one of our speech-language pathology professors here in Canada…
January 25th, 2010 at 4:53 am
Too funny! The only one I know was shared with me by a friend who was an EMT. They had a class of person that the nurses at the hospital referred to as a GOMER - as in, Get Outta My Emergency Room
January 25th, 2010 at 9:14 am
When I nosed through my medical records a couple of years back there were no interesting abbreviations, but a very open “funny looking toes” comment from when I was about six.
January 25th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
So many vet ones e.g.
BDLDLDL - Big dog vs little dog, little dog lost.
I/C - intra-cat
ROBO - Run over by owner
SBI - Something bad inside
January 26th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
LOL! I only recognise GOK from my past (over 20 years since I worked in England!) Great fun!
January 26th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
PFO - P****d fell over. Phlebotomists are often referred to as vampires (by the patients!). Orthopaedic patients come to dread the physioterrorist and for an easy ride, work in rheumaholiday!
January 27th, 2010 at 9:27 am
FIVE orifices? *thinks*
January 27th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
DFO: Done Fell Out (fainted). Partcularly popular in African American ‘hoods.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
WOFTAM - Waste of F****** time and money
Disneyland Diagnosis - terminal illness in a child… they always seem to want to go there….
January 29th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Could I add to the mix BRUTAL.
Blog reader unconscious through atypical laughter.
Yet again brilliant!!
February 19th, 2010 at 11:41 pm
normal for Fife, love it!
I’m a St.AAA volunteer, and I’m seconded to Kirkcaldy CWS so I can sympathise with that one!
March 5th, 2010 at 1:54 am
LOLINAD - Little old lady in no apparent distress. Usually dropped at the emergency room by ‘caring’ relatives, in preparation for the Granny Dump.