I was in a hospital room recently that had one of those signs on the wall displaying the name of the nurse on duty, specifics of the visit, and so on.
All of the wording on the sign was rendered in English and Spanish (nurse/enfermera, estimated time/ tiempo estimado, etc.). The Spanish translation of “urine sample” was given as “muestra de v”. I was surprised to see just the letter “v” alone like that. I got up close to the sign to see if some letters were worn or scratched off - it appeared not.
So … why “muestra de v” and not “muestra de orina”? And if “v” can translate to “urine” … is that “v” kind of akin to English ‘baby talk’ “wee” or “wee wee” meaning “urine”?
After some research it seems like a local peculiarity, slang; a specific use of a general expression. I already knew the plastic sample tubes with the conical bottoms are often called “v” (short for tubos en uve), what I find searching uses the expression muestra de v for several kinds of liquid samples. Even without the English part of the sign, I imagine the nurse would not be expecting people to bring their own samples from lumbar punctions (I’ve found several mentions linked to those).
I suspect whomever translated it was a practitioner. Spanish-speaking patients will need to either figure it out from the English or ask “¿qué es uve? ”
Just another guess, but a common reason for taking urine samples in a hospital setting isn’t for chemical analysis but to measure the Volume of urine being produced. It might be a shorthand way to signify they are monitoring the volume every 12 or 24 hours.
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