Healthy Living

Healthcare professionals are so accustomed to using acronyms that we forget that not everyone understands us when we explain things. When I was in nursing school and learning what seemed like a million acronyms, we never tired of creating new names for the terms.

We amused ourselves by devising names for that long-anticipated goal of Registered Nurse: RN came to be known as Real Nuts, Really Nosy, Rotten Neighbors, Respectable Nerds, Roasted Nuts, Reacts Negatively, Respects Nobody or Rusty Nails.

Our friends in medical school were striving to be MDs, or Mentally Developing.

Then there are the diseases. That opened up a whole new world of acronyms. For example, COPD, which stands for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, became Can Order Pizza Delivery. Coronary Artery Disease, CAD, was an easy one: Cats Attack Dogs. Short of Breath already had a great acronym: SOB. So what do you think DJD stands for? Degenerative Joint Disease really means Delicious Jelly Donuts.

If someone tells you that you have CHF, they may mean Congestive Heart Failure, but you know in reality you Can’t Hide Flatus.

Working in the hospital setting brought another set of acronyms and code words to decipher. For example, RRT means Rapid Response Team, but I was so accustomed to re-naming it, I called it Really Rotten Teeth. When “Code 8” was paged overhead, I wondered what happened to Codes 1 through 7.

Then we came into the age of email and texting abbreviations...don’t get me started on that...LOL!

Alice Facente is a registered nurse and clinical educator at the The William W. Backus Hospital Education Department. This column should not replace advice or instruction from your personal physician. If you want to comment on this column or others, visit the Healthy Living blog at www.backushospital.org/backus-blogs or e-mail Ms. Facente or any of the Healthy Living columnists at healthyliving@wwbh.org