Where did you learn all of the acronyms??

Nurses General Nursing

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It's like a whole nother language sometimes reading posts on here.:eek: Can I really expect to learn all of them in nursing school? Or do people generally know a lot of them before that point??

Specializes in ICU/ER.

what about lol nad

little old lady in no apparent distress

heard it from er doc and use it all the time

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Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.

Yes, it will become second nature. But I see 3 sub-types. 1.latin-based abbreviations that as a rule don't change- they are cool especially when you realize you've mastered full-on nurse-speak. The little c with the line over it is one example. These are heard on medical TV shows sometimes.

2."Approved" acronyms that vary quite a bit depending on specialty, or are even the same, but mean something completely different. R.O.M. can mean Rupture Of Membranes or Range Of Motion!! Fun!

3.Informal acronyms like lol and many others that are often quite humorous- ER nurses have the most of these.

It's not like you have to learn them all at once, either. All of us have to keep learning new ones, too. I left nursing for a while, also-- when I returned there were a whole slew of new ones plus 24 hr time 1700= 5pm! Yay! I remembered! :imbar

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Umm... so what does 'c' with the line over it mean?? :imbar

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Specializes in Home Health Care.
Umm... so what does 'c' with the line over it mean?? :imbar

it means "with".

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it means "with".

thanks! :nuke:

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Specializes in M/S, MICU, CVICU, SICU, ER, Trauma, NICU.

You will learn them when you work.

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Specializes in home health, dialysis, others.

Haha! After 25 years of nursing, I needed a change. I became a travel agent - another entire language. Every airport in the world has a three-letter code, and we needed to memorize the most frequently used ones - about 250-300 of them! And there are codes for types of rental cars, flight classifactions, etc, etc.

I had to suppress all the nursing abbreviations and such. Then I went back to nursing!

More importantly, each place you work has a list of acceptable abbreviations. Some places are actually using fewer, especially when it comes to writing med orders. Many places are expecting docs to write out 'right eye' or 'left ear', daily, units, etc, to prevent errors. And when was the last time anyone saw

gr (grains) gtt (drop) m (minim) and some other apothecary stuff! I'm OLD!!!

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