8 Medical Terms Your Doctor Uses to Insult You
Who do you think are the most cynical people in the world? Cops? Executioners? Or maybe prostitutes? Clowns?
We're thinking it's doctors. If you want proof, check out some of the horrifying-yet-hilarious slang they use around the office. Yes, these are real.
What It Means: Patient Reassured And Told to Fuck Off.
When It's Used:
When a patient comes into the ER more hysterical than ill, the doctor reassures the patient and asks them to leave. However, this acronym has gotten at least one doctor into trouble when he scribbled it in a patient's chart and then later was asked to explain it in court.
We're not saying you should ever lie in court, but in that situation you should at least consider it.
What It Means:
Alright, Motherfucker, You're On Your Own.
When It's Used:
If television is to be believed, any condition, no matter how egregious or how slim the chances of survival, can be surmounted with the intervention of a charismatic, slightly eccentric doctor or the introduction of a particularly salient plot point.
Well, television is not to be believed. If a patient split from crotch to neck, sustained a shotgun wound to the chest, or fell twenty stories onto the pavement, then a great deal's up to a God. Assuming he exists, or cares. Thus we get the AMYOYO Syndrome diagnosis, with the variations SOLOMFYOYO (So long, Motherfucker, You're On Your Own) and GPO (Good for Parts Only).
What It Means: Shit-for-Brains.
When It's Used:
If you wind up in the emergency room because, say, you were trying to launch bottle rockets out of your anus, you can expect to hear this term thrown around. Latin, or pseudo-latin, is often used to convey unflattering terms and make it sound grandiloquent to the uninformed (or faecal-encephalopathic) ear.
Variations include Cranio-Rectal Syndrome and Cranial Rectosis, presumably for when the patient doesn't have shit for brains but merely has his head up his ass.
What It Means:
Also called an "Open and Close" or a "Peek and Shriek," this is when a surgeon opens up a patient for surgery, discovers nothing can be done to avert the inevitable, and sews them back up immediately. Or, if they feel like it, practice surgical technique for a while.
When It's Used:
Generally, this is encoded as "C&P," "CNP" or something similar, so that the head of the department knows what happened but the to-be-aggrieved family doesn't. Typically this happens with very old people, those with suddenly aggravated chronic health problems, or people with inoperable cancer, soon resulting in a "healthy tumor" (a dead patient).
What It Means: Something Bad Inside.
When It's Used:
When the medical staff encounters a strange complaint that doesn't meet any known diagnostic criteria. As much as you don't want to hear SBI as your diagnosis, it's still better than the alternate SVBI (Something Very Bad Inside) which means whatever it is appears to be killing you.
Either may be followed up with a "SWAG" (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess).
What It Means:
Cletus the Fetus. Used to describe infants born at 23 weeks or earlier, where their survival rate is less than 1%. There are no confirmed cases of babies surviving at 22 weeks or earlier, which means that children born then are less likely to live than someone who just jumped off the Empire State Building.
When It's Used:
New parents have a tendency to not hear anything that doesn't fit the "Our child will survive because he is special, we are special, and we love him" paradigm. No. Little Cletus will make it no matter what those mean old overpaid white coats tell Mommy and Daddy. Because life works like Lifetime home movies.
It's at this point you should realize that when you're surrounded by the sick and dying every day, no subject is too dark for comedy.
What It Means:
Hospitals use a series of emergency codes (Code Blue, for instance, means the patient is dying and needs immediate resuscitation). Not listed among the official codes is the Slow Code, meaning the patient is dying, and not to worry too much about it.
When It's Used:
Sometimes, a very ill, very elderly, or very hopeless patient wants the doctors to do everything they can to keep them alive. And sometimes, doctors don't want to do that: it's too much work, the patient will die anyway, or the person just isn't worth preserving.
What It Means: Chronic Biscuit Toxicity. Patient is really fat.
When It's Used:
Doctors seem to be inventing more and more of these unflattering terms as obesity becomes more chronic in the western world. You may also hear Polydipose Dysfunction, BW (beached whale) and others, all of which are sure to see plenty of usage until some enlightened future when a doctor can just say the phrase "lard ass" to a patient's face.
Here are some other, rather self-explanatory terms you probably don't want to hear in the halls outside your hospital room:
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Cunts and Runts
The gynecology/obstetrics department. BFH
Big Fucking Head. As in, the patient has one. Brothel Sprouts
Genital warts. COPS
Chronic Old Person's Disease. Donorcycle
Motorcycle. As in, a frequent source of organ donors. CTD
Circling The Drain. Just picture the world of the living as a bath tub. |
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If you enjoy thinking your doctors are horrible people and want to think it more, this site has an enormous list of these terms that pretty much redefine cynicism.
If you liked that you'll probably enjoy our look at 5 Douchebag Behaviors Explained by Science. And don't forget to check out Internet Party 2: An Intervention for MySpace to see which sites you shouldn't be inviting to your next intervention. You should probably also watch this video to find out why 7 Reasons the New Kid Rock Song is The Worst Ever Written.








In the military, the 68W are taught (off the book) about an MPH diagnosis, which stands for "My p***y hurts". Don't get the wrong idea, it's a VERY serious condition amongst individuals who have to run in the morning for PT. The first indication is an answer related to anything cardio when asked what PT was that morning.
ReplyYou missed a couple that we use in the prehospital field as paramedics:
ReplyAFU (All Fucked Up) referring to a trauma patient in which there is jack s**t we can do at this point. (See also, SNAFU, which is used to describe an entire scene where... it sort of defines itself doesn't it?
TMB (Too many birthdays) Kind of like COPS, except they are just a little older.
DRT is only used in the most southern regions of the united states, such as Texas volunteer fire departments. It's our verson of a DOA. It stands for "Dead right there."
I'm a practicing physician, working ER and ICU in a busy Level 2 trauma center and have never in my life heard any of these things except donorcycle - and that I learned from my police officer partner. Someone went out of their way to try to create an inflammatory article, but themselves just came away ignorant. I hope their "research" came back to bite them in the butt.
ReplyYour credentials are so impressive. I mean, to make such a confident statement would mean you've worked at every hospital, right?
My mother's a dialysis nurse and she's only ever heard of the slow code.
ReplyYou'd be surprised how many people turn up at a ER with something up there hole, and it's not just men. There only a bit higher in number.
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesMy friend's mother is a nurse and she has a special category/introduction to this type of story: "What what, up the butt?"
@skyblacker
Funny women. :-)
@skyblacker lol
I have a friend who is at the counter to the emergency and told me a few crusty stories, including the one when someone shoved a shampoo bottle up the ass and couldn't get it out. Bwahahaha.
omg iknow................shot glass, not the thin ones. are our ers most common.
Acute Lead Poisoning (gunshot victim) gets thrown around rather liberally around here.
ReplyMind telling me where you live so I can avoid it?
heard that before. a few times
When I worked as an events steward we were informed of PAFO (pissed(drunk)and fallen over) and LOL(little old lady) by the paramedics who worked with us
ReplyMy brother (a doctor) usually says it LOL-NAD. "Little old lady, no apparent distress", basically just a lonely old woman who needs an excuse to find someone to talk to.
I'm an ICU nurse and "donorcycle" is the only one I've heard of.
ReplyThat one made me laugh, then sad. :(
You can NEVER use those acronyms in a chart... Unless you're an asshole... and being one has little to do with being a doctor...
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesHa! They've been caught doing it. Look, remember no matter how professional a doctor is, there are times when a p***k is going to be trying their patience (!)
Fwah? Plenty of doctors are assholes, because doctors are people and plenty of people are assholes. They are not magically made non-assholes just by completing medical school. I mean, do you just not know any doctors? Have you never been to one?
And indeed, plenty of people are magically made assholes just by completing medical school. See also "God Complex"
And sometimes they're made assholes by constantly having people expect them to have godlike powers, blame them for everything that goes wrong, and lie to them for drugs. I imagine it gets tiring after a while.
Our personal favorite in radiology was always TSTLS "too stupid to live syndrome" usually reserved for dumbasses that ended up in the ER because of being drunk or other stupid behavior that their buddies should have stopped them from doing.
ReplyAlong with COPS, there's TFO (Too f*****g Old). Source: Paramedic friend going into nursing.
ReplyIt's sad that I know people who probably would shoot a bottle rocket out of their anus
Replyhey i'm a prostitute and the most optimistic and un-cynical person i know....prostitutes ARE usually pretty jaded bunch, but on the w"hole" there are exceptions to every "rule"
ReplyHey now, what's everyone got against prostitutes? Or was it the poor typing?
I've heard of NFN - Normal For Norfolk (where people typically are a bit backward) and apparently any symptom that's "idiopathic" means "f**ked if we know why"
ReplyYeah I heard a good joke about them cheering on global warming because it will give them a chance to use their webbed hands and feet.
What about good ol' FUBAR (f**ked Up Beyond All Repair)? I know it's usually used by the military types but it seems fitting for certain situations.
ReplyWe may call babies prior to 26 weeks fetuses, but not Cletuses. FLK and AQR are both used though for kids we think have a genetic disorder (Funny Looking Kid and Ain't Quite Right, respectively). We're also very specifically trained to never put that in a chart.
ReplySome psych professionals use NFW: Nut F**ck Whacko
ReplyMy mother is a psychologist and she told me that when she did her training (or whatever u call it) in a clinic, a common term they used was FLK - Funny Looking Kid. it's for when a young child has something clearly wrong with it, but they can't tell what it is.
ReplyNumber 3 was just sad man.
ReplyWhy didn't you mention "Gomer"("Get out of my Emergency Room", meaning, going to ER for something dumb) it's one of the more famous ones >.>
Reply