Every program has slang. For example, I cannot seem to stop calling a certain test "LENIS" (pronounced: Lenny's. As in, belonging to that greasy guy on "Laverne and Shirley"), which is what we called this test at my residency training site. The clumsy acronym stands for "Lower Extremity Non-Invasive Series" or something like that, but the rest of the world calls them lower extremity doppler ultrasounds and will persist in not understanding you if you keep calling them LENIS.
Oh, and we used to call pre-eclampsia "P-E-T" (you would say every letter, you would never say "pet"); I think it once stood for "Pre-Eclampsia-Toxemia" [toxemia is a very, very old word for pre-eclampsia], and it's redundant, and not any shorter than just saying pre-eclampsia, but there you are. We said it, it's how I learned to talk OB, and it's awfully hard to get rid of that mother tongue. Multiple times every day, I look up to see a befuddled colleague looking at me, and then I have to translate the language of my residency-country into that of my new fellowship-land.
But here's one term that I have been introduced to at my fellowship program, and I really like it: GI rounds. GI as in gastroenterology. Rounds as in... you know, meeting to talk about patients and weighty clinical issues.
But at Large Urban Hospital, GI rounds means: Let's go eat! Or: the delivery guy from the Thai place is here! Or: the cafeteria closes in 10 minutes - go catch the elevator! *
It's a little bit of a euphemism, but it sounds clinical, so it is very helpful when trying to maintain a professional veneer.
Thus it came to be that in the midst of my triage chaos tongiht, I walked into the room where my intern was performing an ultrasound after running around non-stop since coming on the labor floor 5 hours earlier. I stood by him, and very sternly said: Dr. F, you are late to GI rounds, and that is not acceptable. I will finish up here.
He got all the way to the hallway on autopilot; I think he was really convinced he was in some sort of serious trouble with me. Then I heard him cracking up as he walked to the break room.
*Unless you are actually a gastroenterologist. Maybe they go on OB rounds?
I love it! I'm always telling my folks to take a break and get some lunch. From now on, I will let them know that it's time to do some Econometric Forecasting or Trend Analysis. It will sound better when the Big Guy is walking by...
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a resident, the on-call house staff would get take-out delivered and then have the hospital operator announce over the loudspeaker, that the entire hospital hears "Medical nutrition rounds will now begin in such and such conference room" There were also the "liver rounds" in med school, i.e. the friday afternoon happy hour. Then GI guys got offended. I guess they must feel their specialty is being disrespected...
ReplyDeleteSince the weather's gotten nice our staff has "vitamin D rounds," even though it looks like they're hanging out in the sunshine!
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