Any nurse ever move from one area of the USA to another, and find that different terms are used?? Or just that different meds are used more or less frequently?? Just curious!
Up north where I was originally from if we needed a fingerstick bloodsugar on a patient we called it precisely that. "Get a fingerstick on Ms. Jones in 403b." Then I moved down south and they were talking about "semiquans". "Get the semiquan machine." I had NO IDEA what they were talking about!! Stands for semi-quantitative which it actually is, but up north we NEVER called it that...
Or back then up north Tylenol and Codeine was a very common pain med ordered. It was said verbally, and abbreviated, as "T & C #3" or "T & C #4". When doctors wrote orders for it they even wrote it that way... (I know that nowadays most things have to be written out and abbreviations are bad, but this was over 10 years ago now.) But, anyways, when I moved down south, T & C was not a common med ordered. (Instead Tylox seemed to be the med of choice. I had NEVER even heard of Tylox up north!) But anyways, once I did get a phone order from a MD (here in the south) for Tylenol and Codeine. I read the order back to him and just automatically said it as "T & C", and the doctor was like "What?!! T & C? What are you talking about? I just told you tylenol and codeine." Oops....sorry.
Or, down here, they give milk and molosses enemas! I have NEVER and I mean NEVER heard of this up north. In fact, I thought it was a joke and that they were trying to pull my leg!!
Any other interesting stories?
I imagine that foreign trained nurses that move to the USA to work as nurses, must have issues with this as well...
