I have just been reading a posting by a student nurse in the US which describes the day he has just had in an ITU as part of his clinical experience, and it has got me thinking about language again. Not the UK English, US English thing, but the language of our lives and work. During my career I have had to learn a variety of different lingos, firstly during my nurse training which was as much about being able to understand what people around me were on about as the desire to seem knowledgeable to others. I then found out that you had to know how to translate medical speak back into English so that you could discuss diagnosis, treatment and care with your patients and their relatives. There are also your own family who like to hear you speak in medical / nursing lingo, but also want to know what the hell you are on about!

Different areas of medicine and nursing, not surprisingly provide the health care professional with a variety of different languages to learn, for example acute care is different to district nursing and then nurisng academics often seem in a world of their own. Mind you that is another story entirely!

Now of course I am a manager and can speak manager speak, I am still a nurse and often have to work with other nurses so we need to be able to understand each other. On top of that I have my meetings with university lecturer types who blast me with the science of their world; Oh the circles I move in!

One little anecdote which could be an urban myth as I didn’t witness it first hand. A patient was recovering from a Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG to those in the know, pronounced CABBAGE), and was ventilated so couldn’t speak to the staff around him. After some time he became distressed and following extubation spoke to his nurse and told her how relieved he was that he wasn’t after all a cabbage (what a patient might be if they were brain damaged / dead rather than a vegetable). Makes you think doesn’t it.

This posting is in no way meant to suggest anything about disappearing John’s post which was an excellent reflection on his day, though full of medical speak.