Absurd Medical Abbreviations

Nurses General Nursing Nursing Q/A

Specializes in ER, Med Surg,Drug Etoh, Psych.

What is the worst you have seen?I think mine is , as a new nurse I saw an order for LOC PRN. I'm thinking level of consciousness as needed??? Turned out doc meant lazative of choice! ?

11 Answers

Specializes in CVICU.

When I worked in the ER, we had a running joke. A long time ago a rather uneducated fellow came into the ER. When asked what he needed to be seen for, the patient said "MY TOOTH BE ****** UP!" The guy who checked him in is a bit of a joker and this was back in the day when we still wrote patient name/complaints on the white board. Anyway, he put the patient's last name and chief complaint as "MTBFU." I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but our MDs started referring to tooth complaints as MTBFU. One day, we had a resident doing their off-service rotation through the ER and actually wrote "MTBFU" as a diagnosis on a chart. Imagine explaining that to our manager when the coders were trying to figure out what "MTBFU" was in the ICD-9!!!

Specializes in Medical.

We had a resident admit a patient with the annotation "not for NS" - normal saline? Nursing services? Net stockings? Nylon suspenders? (We were getting desperate!)

Necropsy. Of course!

PS I work in acute care and the patient was remotely that ill. In the event that he did unexpectedly die we'd probably need to know he didn't want to be autopsied, so using an abbreviation - brillaint plan. And an unusual one? Genius!

Specializes in Med/Surg, LTC.

At the local hospital, instead of FSBS (finger stick blood sugar) they say/write/use BGs(Blood Glucoses). I had to explain to another nurse what I meant when I wrote BG at my new facility, and she said when she was in school they said CBG. (capillary blood glucose).

Why can't we just make it easy and say BS for blood sugar??? ha ha! :)

Specializes in Nursing Home ,Dementia Care,Neurology..

In the UK we use BM for blood sugar.I think it stemmed from Bolringer Manheim the company that made the test strips but I know what you guys across the pond use BM for!!

Specializes in Geriatrics, Home Health.

I once had a order that said "Instill 5 ml NS before Sx." I knew NS was normal saline, but instilling it before symptoms made no sense. Turns out Sx stood for suction.

I hate abbreviations.

StudentNurseForever said:

Why can't we just make it easy and say BS for blood sugar??? ha ha! ?

Because someone would listen to the patient's lungs. Or auscultate the abdomen. Or think you were referring to a college degree. ? The acronyms have gone crazy, I tell ya!

How about PROM? During my last clinical round (on a med/surg/rehab floor) it caused some confusion...to the students, it meant 'passive range of motion', to our instructor it meant 'premature rupture of membranes' and we always had to give her a moment to go "wait, what? oh yeah, rehab!"

When I worked in the ER, we had a running joke. A long time ago a rather uneducated fellow came into the ER. When asked what he needed to be seen for, the patient said "MY TOOTH BE ****** UP!" The guy who checked him in is a bit of a joker and this was back in the day when we still wrote patient name/complaints on the white board. Anyway, he put the patient's last name and chief complaint as "MTBFU." I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but our MDs started referring to tooth complaints as MTBFU. One day, we had a resident doing their off-service rotation through the ER and actually wrote "MTBFU" as a diagnosis on a chart. Imagine explaining that to our manager when the coders were trying to figure out what "MTBFU" was in the ICD-9!!!

OMG, I rarely, truly, LOL, but this did it!

Specializes in MS, ED.
I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but our MDs started referring to tooth complaints as MTBFU. One day, we had a resident doing their off-service rotation through the ER and actually wrote "MTBFU" as a diagnosis on a chart. Imagine explaining that to our manager when the coders were trying to figure out what "MTBFU" was in the ICD-9!!!

HAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! :lol2:

Thank you for sharing!

Best,

Southern

Specializes in Nursing Home ,Dementia Care,Neurology..
We had a resident admit a patient with the annotation "not for NS" - normal saline? Nursing services? Net stockings? Nylon suspenders? (We were getting desperate!)

Necropsy. Of course!

PS I work in acute care and the patient was remotely that ill. In the event that he did unexpectedly die we'd probably need to know he didn't want to be autopsied, so using an abbreviation - brillaint plan. And an unusual one? Genius!

I thought necropsy was the autopsying of an animal?

I loved the MTBFU story! :D

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