Glossary for beginners

suzanne4, RN · Feb 3, 2006

I suggest that you get a medical dictionary, the list would be way too long to post here. There is only so much space that we have available to us here.:)

JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP · Feb 3, 2006

I'm sorry if posting this was out of line. I did check an online medical dictionary but it's obvious that these terms are being used in a special sense, a nursing jargon, that's hard to find out just from checking a dictionary. Acuity means sharpness or clarity; mandate means order or requirement, but I'd like to understand the terms in the context that they're being used here. I'm not asking anyone to post an entire dictionary.

zacarias, ASN, RN · Feb 3, 2006

"Mandate" here would mean "require." For instance, some hospitals mandate that nurses work at least two weekends a month.

"Acuity" refers to how "acute" patients are on a given floor or unit. Basically it refers to how sick patients are and how easily they could crash or die. High acuity would mean many patients are complicated and require many nursing interventions for their care etc.

Hope this helped.

suzanne4, RN · Feb 3, 2006

Definitely not out of line, but there are also so many different uses of some on the simple jargon that is used, that it would still take pages, and pages to try to write. And would probably make it more difficult for you to keep track of. If you can post what you are looking for then it would be easier to answer those.

Acuity means how sick that the patient is, how much nursing care that they are going to require. It is used for staffing purposes.

Mandate means just as in the dictionary. A nurse may be mandated to work overtime, meaning that they are required by their employer. If there is not a replacment for them, then they are mandated to stay.

JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP · Feb 3, 2006

Suzanne, thanks, our lines may have gotten crossed here. I certainly didn't mean that allnurses.com should organize and present a full medical glossary - of course I don't expect you to go to all that work or trouble and that would be way too time-consuming. I just started this thread so I could post words that I come across on this site that are unfamiliar to me. Not very specific medical terms, but everyday expressions that nurses use. OK, now that we got that out of the way, what does "float" mean? Also, I sort of got (from context) that "mandate" means government mandated. Are there government regs about how many nurses must be on the floor? Or are these hospital regs?