"Quick doc, we've got ourselves a Hasselhoff!"
- added December 21, 2007
- 3 responses
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- richjm
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What do David Hasselhoff, Jack Bauer and internet terminology all have in common, apart from each being cool in their own special way? All three have made their way into popular slang used by British doctors on the job to describe specific kinds of patients or diseases, in particular when professional discretion is needed but there's fun to be had.
Doctors have always used a tribal vocabulary to communicate between themselves, but now their secret lingo has been enriched by the electronic media and urban slang. A Hasselhoff describes a patient who turns up in casualty "with an injury with a bizarre explanation" inspired by a freak injury the former Knight Rider star suffered at London's Sanderson hotel last year when he hit his head on a glass shelf while shaving and cut his arm.
Other slang includes:
404 moment: The point in a doctor's ward round when medical records can't be located, coming from internet error message, "404 - document not found.''
Jack Bauer: A doctor who is "still up and working after 24 hours on the job."
Doctors have always used a tribal vocabulary to communicate between themselves, but now their secret lingo has been enriched by the electronic media and urban slang. A Hasselhoff describes a patient who turns up in casualty "with an injury with a bizarre explanation" inspired by a freak injury the former Knight Rider star suffered at London's Sanderson hotel last year when he hit his head on a glass shelf while shaving and cut his arm.
Other slang includes:
404 moment: The point in a doctor's ward round when medical records can't be located, coming from internet error message, "404 - document not found.''
Jack Bauer: A doctor who is "still up and working after 24 hours on the job."
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Some more medical slang includes:
Disco biscuits: The clubbers' drug ecstasy. As in: "The guy in cubicle three looks like he's taken one too many disco biscuits.''
Agnostication: A substitute for prognostication. Term used to the describe the usually vain attempt to answer the question: "How long have I got, doc?''
Blamestorming: Apportioning of blame after the wrong leg or kidney is removed or some other particularly egregious foul-up happens.
Testiculation: Description of a gesture typically used by hospital consultant "when holding forth on subject on which he or she has little knowledge". Gesture is of an upturned hand with outstretched fingers pointed upwards, clutching an invisible pair of testicles.
Other slang used by doctors, according to past letters to the British Medical Journal, include UBI (for "Unexplained Beer Injury''), PAFO ("Pissed And Fell Over'') and Code Brown, or a faecal incontinence emergency.
CTD means "Circling The Drain'', GPO signifies "Good for Parts Only'' and "Rule of Five'' means that if more than five of the patient's orifices are obscured by tubing, he has no chance.
A patient who is "giving the O-sign'' is very sick, lying with his mouth open. This is followed by the "Q-sign'' - when the tongue hangs out of the mouth - when the patient becomes terminal.
As for genetic quirks or inbreeding, FLK means "Funny Looking Kid'' and NFN signifies "Normal For Norfolk,'' a rural English county. -
What about Jack Bauer and Chuck Norris? The have FACTS in common. -
One can't forget possibly the most infamous, popularized in Samuel Shem's book _House of God_, and then on TV in NBC's ER:
Gomer: Get out of my emergency room
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