is it oriented or orientated?

Nurses General Nursing

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what words do you hear consistently mispronounced.....my pet peeve is when people wish to say oriented, as in alert and oriented, and they actually say orientated....where are they getting the extra a and t......

Specializes in forensic, critical care, psych.

OrienTAted makes me crazy, as does irregardless-not a word- the word is regardless. Femoral has the accent on the first syllable- fem' oral. I know it has become somewhat accepted, but I have issues with di-li-TA-tion. The word is

Di-la-tion.

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Probably been addressed already, given the age of this thread, but no, either is NOT ok.

The first entry was "oriented", as an adjective. As in "the person was oriented to person, place, and time". A person can also be "oriented" to room surroundings. He cannot be "orientated" to them. A person is never "orientated x3", if you want to sound educated ;)

The second entry, "orientate", is a verb. Note the word is "orientate", not "orientated".

My personal pet peeve is when a nurse informs me that New Grad Jenny is going to be "orientated" by Jane Doe, RN. Most people will say "she's on orientation" correctly. Yay. But WAAAAYYYY to many will say "she's still being orientated this week"!

I work with a nurse who will always tell me in report that the patient is "orientated" when she means "not confused". Cringe.

1) of course a patient can be orientated to his surroundings, using your posted def. this would be the correct word to use when you are explaining his/her surroundings to him/her....where everything is

2)verbs ordinarily have past tenses

3)again, using the verb to show an action seems appropriate to me.

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OrienTAted makes me crazy, as does irregardless-not a word- the word is regardless. Femoral has the accent on the first syllable- fem' oral. I know it has become somewhat accepted, but I have issues with di-li-TA-tion. The word is

Di-la-tion.

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/dilatation

apparently both are used, in some cases interchangably

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The worst?

Ol'/Old Timer's: Alzheimer's

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OMG! This remind's me of something, I just thought of this... It is absolutely true I kid you not! Was reading a NN from previous shift one time, the nurse had attempted to spell a word several times over, scratching it out, (yes scratching) not just putting a line through her mistakes (this same nurse used white out in a chart once also). The mistakes you could make out looked like; En, enyu, inyer, there were quite a few, after several failed attempts the line she finally made stated "the pt. didn't provide any yurin. I swear I'm not making this up!

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Nother - It's not a word!

Eachother - It's 2 words, not 1!

Loose & Lose - Use the correct term!

Those are just three of many. :)

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.

Well, orientated does drive me nuts, as it does just sound wrong. But apparently, it is a valid word, so I keep my grumbling to myself.

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.
OMG! This remind's me of something, I just thought of this...

The inappropriate use of the "apostrophe s" drives me up the wall as well.

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Specializes in ER, ICU, Education.

Oxygen stats instead of sats, axed instead of asked, and my personal favorite respirating. As in "the patient was respirating to quickly."

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