Why are we still using the R word?

[Selfie]

Why are we still using the R word?

I just read a post on the importance of spelling and grammar when posting as nursing professionals, and it bothers me that as nursing professionals we are still using/posting socially unacceptable terms such as retardation or mental retardation.

Every week I see a new post about someone "having a mentally retarded patient," or " I don't know if he was retarded, but he might have been." I've even seen a recent nursing resume that listed "worked with mentally retarded patients" under job experience.

Why, as a nursing profession, would we still be using outdated and offensive words?

Due to repeated societal abuse and mockery associated with usage of the word, there is now a negative connotation to this word. Nursing professionals should be at the forefront of correct usage.

Just as one wouldn't say " bring the pitcher of water to the guy who looks Chinese" in reference to an Asian American patient, we should not be using "retarded" or "mentally retarded" any longer.

The correct term is now, and has been for some time, "intellectually disabled," or "intellectual disability."The diagnostic term "mental retardation" is being eliminated in upcoming classifications of diseases and disorders.

Please, as medical professionals, consider this, and consider the offensiveness of the r word. Thank you.

[Bortaz, MSN, RN]

20 years from now, people are going to be offended by "special needs" or "intellectually disabled" or whatever todays byword happens to be. What then...make up another one?

It's like in my previous career. Over 20 years, we went from calling prisoners convicts, to inmates, to offenders, to clients. Absolutely ridiculous.

[NurseDirtyBird]

Language is fluid, not static. Just because something is defined as one thing, it can very easily mean something 50 years later. Take the words "idiot," "imbecile," and "cretin," for example. These were once medical diagnoses, for the exact disability noted in this thread. I'll bet nobody here would dare use those terms in regards to a patient with this disability now. Why? Because they're outdated and have been turned into insults over the years. I can think of several other outdated diagnoses. Hysteria, multiple personality disorder, consumption, leprosy, apoplexy, dropsy. You use these now, you get in trouble, because they are no longer accepted medical diagnoses. The medical community is even changing anatomical terms to be more precise, such as the use of "auditory tube" in place of Eustacian tube. Or "Uterine tube" in place of Fallopian tube."

People just don't like change. The English language is not and never has never been rigid, and is in fact made up of bits and pieces of other languages. We've made whole new words with whole new meanings from words in other languages. There is no absolute except the fact that there is no absolute (that's a perfect example of the term "the exception that proves the rule," BTW, another term widely misused) AND YOU ALL KNOW WHAT I MEANT BY "BTW!" 30 years ago anyone would have looked at that and circled it with a red pen, because it certainly wouldn't have been on a computer screen.

Find a time machine, go forward 300 years, and find that you can't understand a darn thing anyone is saying.

[BlueDevil,DNP, DNP, RN]

It is a legitimate diagnosis and therefore appropriate. Likewise the term "obesity." We are not going to stop using appropriate scientific terminology because laypeople use words they don't understand inappropriately. Use your head. No one with any class would ever call anyone a "retard" or course, but when an individual is, in fact, mentally retarded, it is perfectly alright to say so. Just as it is fine to say a person with a BMI >30 is obese. They are. It is a fact, not an insult. Also, just as a point of fact, leprosy still exists and has current diagnostic codes, as does hysteria. What the heck?

[NurseDirtyBird]

Oh, and let's not forget Shakespeare. All in English, yet so archaic you need a literature professor to explain the jokes to you.

Leperosy is termed Hansen's disease.

The ICD-11 is changing "Mental Retardation" into "Intellectual Disability," and the DSM V already has.

Hysteria was once used as a diagnosis of "women's problems," and is now is being changed to "Conversion Disorder."

[psu_213, BSN, RN]

Over 20 years, we went from calling prisoners convicts, to inmates, to offenders, to clients.

So wait a minute...now both patients and prisoners are clients??? What a strange juxtaposition.

[pixiestudent2]

I work with mentally retarded patients. The diagnosis is on everyone of their charts. Even now with the new term, their original diagnosis won't change...

Political correctness makes me cringe. When I sin elementary school, the kids who were cognitively slower went to a separate class called, "special education" and guess what, it was an insult to call someone special....

[klone, MSN, RN]

I'm pretty sure leprosy is not an outdated medical term.

According to the CDC, Hansen's disease is ALSO KNOWN AS leprosy. *NOT "formerly known as"

[Kipahni, RN]

Language evolves. That is why people still use retarded.

"What makes a word bad"

[CodeteamB]

As professionals when we use the term mentally retarded it does not have a hateful connotation. I liken it to this:

I walk up to you and say "Tom is gay."

If I am talking about our friend Tom, and referring to how lame he is for preferring diet soda, then I am being ignorant and hateful.

If I am referring to our friend Tom the homosexual, then I am using accurate language to describe something about Tom.

Ignorant people who use "retarded" to describe stupid behaviour can and should be educated and asked to stop. Medical professionals using the term as it was clinically intended should not be lumped into this group.

[WildcatFanRN, BSN, RN]

I did a paper on this and as a volunteer for Special Olympics it's a major topic. My sister is mentally disabled and she will tell you straight up she is not retarded, she is brain damaged. In my state the Health and Human Services is changing the terminology to more accurately address the person's diagnosis. Mentally disabled isn't politically correct, the word retarded just has so many negative connotations attached to it. To many retarded means stupid, and just because you have a intellectual disability or are mentally slow doesn't equal stupid. And if I remember correctly the DSM-5 no longer uses the term mental retardation as a diagnosis.

[Caribbean Character]

[h=2]Definition of MENTAL RETARDATION[/h] : subaverage intellectual ability equivalent to or less than an IQ of 70 that is accompanied by significant deficits in abilities (as in communication or self-care) necessary for independent daily functioning, is present from birth or infancy, and is manifested especially by delayed or abnormal development, by learning difficulties, and by problems in social adjustment

-- mentally retarded adjective

The "R Word" is a clinical diagnosis. Just because the general public has used it as a despairing term does not make it evil.

[MatrixRn]

'The R word.' How ridiculous is that phrase? When did the word retardation become the R word. That is the political police going way off track. Pretty soon we will have the T word, the Z word or whatever someone wants to deem a bad word.

That said I have a mentally disabled child. I do not use retarded to describe her and if someone says the word in reference to her I politely correct them. That is how we move things forward not by having another P, Q, R (pick your letter) word and banning a word that is used to describe other items, as others have pointed out.