Nurse Slang Yo!

Nurses General Nursing

Published

So this morning, after my alarm clock rudely woke me up (so ruuuuude :sniff:) , I engaged in my terrible terrible habit of getting on facebook immediately after shutting my alarm off on my phone. I am friends with a few nursing students and they are always posting funny little nursey articles. Well this morning, one of my nursing student friends left a link to a pretty funny article that discussed the different slang used by nurses at work.They had it set up in a dictionary format, where they would use the words in a sentence as an example. As a dorky, overly excited pre-nursing student, I found them hilarious!

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My fave was "PITA" which stood for Pain in the orifice.

Such as There is a PITA in room 9, just to let you know.

So I wanted everyone to share some of their "Nurse Slang" they may use daily or have heard before.

Thanks!

Specializes in Care Coordination, MDS, med-surg, Peds.
Somebody who's Respiratory sounds ARE SQUEEKY, PURRING, with variable tones of GURGLING, BUBBLING,

I called lung sounds like that "wheez les""

Haven't seen the one we made up at my place of employment....CTPC: crazier than a pet coon. Yep, small rural hospital, but this works!

Specializes in Hospice, HIV/STD, Neuro ICU, ER.

"Pleasantly confused"

DOV---dead on vent

fluff and suck--vented patient that is also DOV

friends and family--psych patients (from my days as a phlebotomist having to draw the pt's on inpt psych ward)

deep sea diving---placing foley in an extremely large female patient

turtle---male with extremely inverted member

Specializes in Emergency/Trauma/Critical Care Nursing.
DOV---dead on vent

fluff and suck--vented patient that is also DOV

friends and family--psych patients (from my days as a phlebotomist having to draw the pt's on inpt psych ward)

deep sea diving---placing foley in an extremely large female patient

turtle---male with extremely inverted member

Lol I always thought that second one meant something totally different! Hahaha ;)

Specializes in Critical Care, Med-Surg, Psych, Geri, LTC, Tele,.
"Pleasantly confused"

As well as "pleasantly psychotic". Just love those pts! Seriously! [emoji3]

Specializes in Psych, Med-surg, Travel.

Some terminology I've come across in psych:

B52= 50 of benadryl, 5 of Haldol, and 2 of Ativan (nearly a staple of all psych admits!)

F. U. B. A. R. : effed up beyond all reason (usually those so high or drunk they have no clue what's going on)

Growing wings: those patients who are looking for a way to elope the locked unit

Hidden treasure: the crazy things we find in crazier places... My fave was the mp3 player (complete with headphones) in a woman's nether regions...

Bed bound: someone in restraints

And happy hour. When night time meds were given out lol.

TMB=too many birthdays

HHH enema=high, hot and hellofalot

I always loved the TMBs.. We also use VitaminX-Xanax, and POF PRN(pillow over face as needed)

Specializes in Pediatric Critical Care.

The COW is out of the paddock- computer on wheels is missing

[emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

Specializes in Orthopedics and GI.

Code brown. I work on a busy gi floor. Lots of exploding colostomy and ileostomies. Also used for our incontinent diaper wearing patients and then the schizophrenics who just choose to go in the bed !

TSTL - too stupid to live. Generally falls under the umbrella of "sometimes the purpose of your life is simply to serve as a warning to others" Demotivators.

Love this one, goes well with mine:

TFTB - Too Fat To Breathe, morbidly obese patients that come in in respiratory distress, usually frequent fliers

Specializes in CVICU.
Where I work, sometimes when staff goes out for a smoke, it's termed an air quality check.
We always called it going out to check the weather.
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