The Idler, Friday, April 8, 2011

Cat out of the bag CAN DR KILDARE and the entire genre of hospital drama/romance survive this? A British doctor has let the cat out of the bag as to what the scribbled diagnostic notes of his colleagues actually mean. DBI refers to "Dirt Bag Index", and multiplies the number of tattoos with the number of missing teeth to give an estimate of the number of days since the patient last bathed. NFN means "Normal for Norfolk"; FLK "Funny-looking kid"; and GROLIES "Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence In Ethnic Skirt". So says Dr Adam Fox, who works at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London, and has spent four years charting more than 200 colourful examples of this medical shorthand. However, as he told the BBC, far fewer doctors now annotate their notes with abbreviations designed to spell out the unsayable truth about their patients. The increasing rate of litigation means there is a far higher chance that doctors will be asked in court to explain the exact meaning of what they have written. One doctor who had scribbled on a patient's notes TTFO - an expletive expression roughly translated as "Told To Go Away" - was asked by the judge what the contraction meant, and fortunately had the presence of mind to say: 'To take fluids orally'." The annotations often refer to the patient's intellectual capacity. Examples: LOBNH (Lights On But Nobody Home); CNS-QNS (Central Nervous System - Quantity Not Sufficient); and "Pumpkin Positive", which means that a penlight shone into the patient's mouth would encounter a brain so small that the whole head would light up.     Regular visitors to Accidents and Emergencies on a Friday or Saturday night are also classified. A PFO is a drunken patient who sustained injury falling over, while a PGT "got thumped" instead. Other annotations and in-house expressions revealed by Dr Fox: ·        CTD - Circling the Drain (A patient who is expected to die soon). ·        GLM – Good-looking Mum. ·        GPO - Good for Parts Only. ·        TEETH - Tried Everything Else, Try Homeopathy. ·        UBI - Unexplained Beer Injury. ·        Digging for Worms - varicose vein surgery. ·        Departure lounge - geriatric ward. ·        Handbag positive - confused patient (usually elderly lady). ·        Woolworth's Test - anaesthetic term (if you can imagine the patient shopping in Woolies, it's safe to give a general anaesthetic).   And much of the slang is directed at colleagues as much as patients. Rheumatology, considered by hard-pressed juniors to be one of the less busy specialties, becomes "rheumaholiday"; the "Freud Squad" are psychiatrists; and "Gassers" and "Slashers" are anaesthetists and general surgeons. Dr Fox is keen to point out that neither he, nor the other authors of the paper, published in the journal Ethics and Behaviour, actually advocate using any of the terms. But, he says, it's a form of communication that needs to be recorded because it might not be around forever. APOTIP – A Plague On These Insolent Poxdoctors!

Human shields

NEWS from the front … "Tyrant Using Human Shields", reads a headline in Private Eye, the British satirical magazine.

"There are shocked reports coming in that struggling despot David Cameron has been using Liberal Democrats as 'human shields.'

"'They're being cynically placed around Mr Cameron to stop any attacks on him,' said a man in camouflage fatigues.

"Mr Cameron denied he was using Liberal Democrats as human shields, saying they were much more useful as an occasional table."

Lovely stuff!

Unkind to cobras

EARLIER this week I expressed concern that American comedienne Ellen DeGeneres, who has been trying to send messages via Twitter to an Egyptian cobra that has escaped from the Bronx Zoo, might next be prompted to do a Cleopatra and clasp an asp to her bosom.

No harm would come to Ellen, says a reader. But the cobra would die of silicone poisoning.

Tailpiece

A SPANISH knight arrives at an inn at dusk and asks for a meal.

"Your name, Senor?"

"Don Pedro Gonzales Gayetan de Guevara."

"Apologias, Senor. We do not have a table for five."

Last word

A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing."

Sir Arnold Bax