descriptive terminology

emhkirkpatrick · Apr 14, 2000

We had a patient who wasn't real bright and difficult to deal with. He had put his arm through a window while arguing with his wife and was upset that his fingers tingled.

He just didn't seem to understand though we had explained several times that he had severed all the nerves and arteries in his forearm and was truly lucky that he was alive and had function and feeling in his hand.

The resident in frustration walked away from the bedside looked at me and said,

"That's man's brain is two neurons held together by a spirochete on it's tenth day of penicillin!"

JillR · Jul 3, 2000

Before I became a RN, I worked in a rural ER as a EMT/ER Tech. Well after a long week during the county fair (all the drunk people wait for a week after the injury to seek help), we had about ten people in a row come to the ER for sprained ankles, that they recieved about a week ago, but was not painful until they sobered up on this day.

Well on about the tenth patients I asked the Doc if he wanted me to go ahead and wrap the ankle and he said "you can do ADT."

I asked "ADT?"

He said, "Yes, any damn thing."

panda_181 · Jan 30, 2001

Originally posted by BJA:
Anyone who has spent time in the ER (as a nurse that is) has heard terms like SGP (shallow gene pool), and wished for things like aerosol valium from the waiting and triage area air vents. Here are a couple of good descriptive terms. One I heard from another ER nurse and one from an MD (hematology).

MD calls me when he wants to find a time to talk to a family, "See if you can find the Malignant Familyoma."

The ER nurse says, "We've had a lot of folks here today with CFH." I say, "CHF?" "NO, CFH, Chronic Familial Hypomentia."

I was on Maternity for my clinical time last semester for nursing school, and one of the nurses told me about FLKs...funny looking kids...

Amanda )

OBNURSEHEATHER · Jan 30, 2001

I too work in maternity, and we comment frequently on the kids with "FLK" syndrome!