Learn To Say It Correctly!!

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Doesn't it just drive you insane when someone tells you that Mr. Smith's O2 STAT is 96%?

It's O2 SAT people! Sat, short for saturation. I even hear respiratory therapists saying this. I am sooooo tempted to say something next time, but I know it's just petty, so I needed to vent here. Thank you.

My sister in law, a diabetic, uses "insolent"! Imagine that! I always give my diabetics insulin! LOL! She sometimes has an "eyelasher" bother her; oh yes! when she needs to pay for something, she opens her "billfolder" to get to her money! She once asked to "borry my soupcase" because she wanted to visit her daughter for a week-end.

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Specializes in LDRP.

This is so funny--just had a couple nurses last night say STATs over and over again for SATs and it was driving me bonkers!!!!!!

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Specializes in Medical.
marachne said:
I do have to say that y'all in Oz have taken slang to amazing heights. I realize some of it is based on the old cockney rhyming slang, but the imagination involved. Thank the goddess for Macquarie

later, china 

G'day, Marachne.

Yeah, I was jawing about that with a cobber yesterday arvo over a cuppa - top sheila. She said she was in bed with a wog but had chucked a sickie. I'd had a couple of bickies and was full as a goog.

Hoo-roo!

(Hi Marachne -

Yeah, I was talking about that to a friend yesterday afternoon over a drink - she's a great girl. She said she was sick with a bug but had called in sick to work. I'd had a couple of cookies and was full [as an egg].

Bye for now!)

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One thing that really bugs me is calling the people we take care of "clients". We're nurses not attorneys, we take care of patients. We were taught "client" in school but political correctness can go too far.

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We have people who say "dialysized" instead of "dialyzed". It just gets to me-shrug.

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Specializes in Women's health, Ped's, clinical trials.

I have a few favorites from over the years.

Variclose veins

Mammeogram. We even started saying that , calling them mammeo's.

pappa smear.

Tubal litigation Oh dear!

The well known chicken pops.

Sick as hell disease.- sicle cell

Firealls in the eucharist- fibroids

Contraptions instead of contractions.

I'll think of more.

In OB, we always did pronounce cm."s as contieters.

And dilitation , was always prounounced dilitation?

Chicago pronunciations

Oh and PID, instead of PRN!

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One thing that really bugs me is calling the people we take care of "clients". We're nurses not attorneys, we take care of patients. We were taught "client" in school but political correctness can go too far.

I agree!! And now at our hospital they aren't even clients, they are GUESTS.

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pronunciation doesn't bother me too much. call it met-o-pro-LOL, meta-pro-LOL, or whatever you want.

what gets to me is the constant use of incorrect words - or incorrect conjugation of verbs ("I done that!").

and what gets me more than anything else is to see incorrect grammar/spelling in a publication (newspaper this weekend said it's a "great time top be outside!), or in a formal or legal document (like our charting). not taking the five seconds necessary to look up a word can make you appear uneducated, and if people think you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t expect to be respected or treated as a professional. I'm not saying I'm perfect, or that anyone has to be perfect. I don't mind living in a flexible world. and on a message board or whatever, we're all typing so fast, we're going to make mistakes now and then. I just really appreciate when people take the time to use spaces and punctuation in here!

bottom line, it just depends on how you want others to view you. if you want them to think you are intelligent, take a few minutes to read what you have written. if you don't care, then send it off just the way it is and hope to get lucky.

oh and also, I think the “annunciation” posts meant to use “enunciation”, which means utterance or pronunciation according to https://www.dictionary.com/

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Specializes in Med surg, Hospice, Geriatrics, AL, LTAC.

Has anyone thought about this one? "Choir(kwire)practor instead of chiropractor. Drives me nuts. Palpitate instead of palpate, orientated vs oriented, phenergran instead of phenergan, prostrate/prostate--I think these must be widespread mispronunciations. It just drives me crazy when otherwise educated people say this stuff. And wouldn't you think the press writers would have corrected our President 8 years ago when he first started saying "NUC-U-LAR" instead of Nuclear??!!!!! I worked with a nurse who also misspelled words constantly in her charting. Simple things like "TO-LIET" instead of Toilet. And yeah, the O2 STAT gets me, too!!!

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Has anyone thought about this one? "Choir(kwire)practor instead of chiropractor. Drives me nuts. Palpitate instead of palpate, orientated vs oriented, phenergran instead of phenergan, prostrate/prostate--I think these must be widespread mispronunciations. It just drives me crazy when otherwise educated people say this stuff. And wouldn't you think the press writers would have corrected our President 8 years ago when he first started saying "NUC-U-LAR" instead of Nuclear??!!!!! I worked with a nurse who also misspelled words constantly in her charting. Simple things like "TO-LIET" instead of Toilet. And yeah, the O2 STAT gets me, too!!!

as has been noted several times thru this thread....orientated is correct....

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Specializes in OB, PSYCH ER, MED ER, PSYCH/MEDICAL.

nrsbrker: [we take care of "clients"]

Ugh. Agree.

I watched a PBS show on which several 'suits' discussed the health care crisis in the USA, the phenomenon of the bottom line vigilant, for profit HMO.

One physician on the panel said of the new corporate lexicon: "I remember when we were called doctors, not 'providers,' when patients were called patients, not 'covered lives.'

Heck, I'm so old that I remember that too.

Has anyone else experienced the hierarchical leveling of inpatient care teams?

At our hospital, THE MANAGEMENT issued new name tags imprinted with 'patient caregiver' to all staff who touched a patient. We RNs immediately wrote our appropriate titles with black felt tip markers on the tags.

Not only did we find this demeaning, the patients were complaining that they didn't know who was who and whom to ask for what service.

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Peri said:
I couldn't find the reference on that site, but I did find this:

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/orientate

I went to the link you provided, looked up "orientating" and found it to mean facing the East! Therefore, when you are "orientating" you should be facing the East... or would it be you are enlightened, using complementary therapy modalities.... thus incorporating Eastern medicine into our approach? LOL.

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