I work for a MD and there is a dx code for “pain in the neck”. We don’t use that that code though.
There are “favorite patients” that generally are unreasonable in various catagories but usually refers to the ones blessed with the :rolleyes: gift of gab w/o the gift of self-edit (repeats self multiple times w/i same conversation).
I could go on and on about the various foibles of patients, but I won’t.
Reminds me of my days having to deal with users when I had to do support for our computers systems. ID-TEN-T error (=ID-10-T= idiot) and PIBCAK error(Problem Is Between Chair and Keyboard) on resolution reports. Those ones are well know by now though, and I won’t break th silence on some of the others for the sake of my tech borthers and sisters.
Whether these can be applied to medical situations or not, I’ve always enjoyed:
FUBAR – Fucked Up Beyond All Repair (Recognition)
FAFFH – Fucked And Far From Home
DILLIGAS – Do I Look Like I Give A Shit
CSWC – Call Somebody Who Cares
INMJ – It’s Not My Job
(These and others which can be found in those acronym explanation sites are so helpful in times of stress and confusion.)
Not really a code, but I recall hearing on Dr. Dean Edell’s radio show that surgeons are trained not to say “oops” when they make a mistake. They say “there.”
Says who, Playboy? I had foot surgery last year and this nasty metal appliance fastened in my foot for a couple months, and right in the middle of taking it out the doctor said, “Oops,” loud and clear. I have to admit, it was fun harassing him about it afterwards…because he really DID pull a stupid, was trying to pull a pin through my bone straight out and it wasn’t moving at all, the reason for which became blindingly obvious when it turned out that all he had to do was unscrew it and voila. (The strangest part is that none of it hurt, or I might not have found his “oops” so funny!)
We use codes in vet medicine too:
-
ADR = “ain’t doing right”: for when folks would call up and say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with fluffy, he just ain’t acting himself lately”.
-
PITA = b/c our field isn’t monitored by the healthcare industry, we can pretty much charge anything we wish. A “PITA” fee (Pain in the a** fee) is extra dollars tagged on to services to make us feel better about particularly nasty, bothersome clients. In other words, if you cause alot of unnecessary grief, you pay more. Ethical? Probably not. Makes us feel better? Absolutely.
My favorite computer slangism is I/O (Idiot Operator) Error.
Every once in a while someone prints a list of so-called “medical” terms no one uses as evidence of the callousness of our profession. Words liek oligoneuronal are tossed around in the surgeon’s lounge, but it beats calling someone a moron. I’ve heard of FLK and the Q-sign in passing, but never seen them charted. Code Brown is in common use. I’d say many of the other examples are used by a few specific doctors. In fact, doctors usually go out of there way to say nice things about patients since they do not want to look like they were providing suboptimal care by being biased against a patient (sadly, this often happens). What would a lawyer do with DBI?
Nobody’s posted GOMER yet?
Get Out of My Emergency Room
–
I’d never heard FLK until last week, when a reference in a Tom Clancy book as to how a ship’s radar set was so powerful, if you turned it full bore on a helicopter, it’d give the pilot FLKs.
Some of these things are, indeed, not charted because, well, who wants to have to explain the DBI in court should that patient ever sue for anything?
It’s like the clinic I used to work for not wanting to put CAUTION stickers on the charts of patients who were, um, orally fixated on the staff. (Many pet owners are mortally offended by the idea that precious little Fluffy habitually tries to bite the staff, 'cause he’s so sweet at home.) So instead of “Caution” or “Will Bite” or “Aggressive”, we marked charts as “NOF” for “not overly friendly”. This can be code for anything from “a little shifty, so watch yourself” to “land shark requiring multiple people to safely restrain.” (The differences are communicated by the size of the letters, number of underlines, and highlighting the notation.)
My current workplace, sadly, doesn’t utilized the PITA code. Pity, really, some nights we could make a killing off that alone.
As for other vet codes, there’s BAR–Barking And Running. (Although it’s sometimes charted as bright, alert and responsive.)
There is also the possibly mythical one used in A & E Departments - TF BUNDY.
Totally Fucked But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet.
In other words, he is alive so they have to work on him, even though they know it is going to be wasted effort…
I agree Dr. Paprika. Being in the insurance industry, I cannot imagine a physician on the witness stand being asked by opposing counsel what DBI means on his chart.
I can, however, see this jargon being used among health professionals.
As a former medical transcriptionist and current medical transcription quality assurance person, I’ve had the opportunity to transcribe or read thousands of medical records documents. I’ve never once seen any slang like the above used. I do, however, know a medical secretary who used to work for a physician who would say the most horrible things in his dictations, such as “the patient is a fat, smelly old bitch.” He was pretty much insane, though, and got in lots of trouble for this (and he tried to convince the head of his department that the secretary inserted those phrases into his documents to get him in trouble :rolleyes: ).
Making the O-sign and making the Q-sign are common among the EMS community in my area. Same with code brown.
Another is “frequent flyers”…folks who call 911 very often, for various reasons. Most commonly they want a free ride to town, but sometimes they’re just plain bored and lonely.
“CCFCCP”= Coo-Coo For Cocoa Puffs…patients whose current mental status is questionable, for any reason whatsoever.
Others I’ve heard or read about but never used:
“Crispy Critters” are burn victims.
“CATS” (cut all to sh*t) or “Hamburger Helper” are trauma patients.
“ART” (assuming room temperature) are DOA’s.
As a clinical doc, I’ve done peer review work, reading thousands of charts. Those abbreviations do NOT get put in there. But we do use some of them among ourselves, as a tension releaser, and a way of identifying in a few short syllables what sort of day or patient we had.
Some of my favorites:
Microdeckia: a few cards short a full deck
Betzopenic: short on the good kind of neurons
Terrasphere: dirtball
Earth cube: Similar to above
Dysfunctional supratentorium: thinking part of brain not working well
To me, frequent flyers are people who come to my ER looking for Dilaudid. I’ve not seen most of Qadgop’s terms, but “the problem is supratentorial” is commonplace.
I remember hearing about “FLK”
Funny Looking Kid.
The first night I was in ER the doc said this kid had SB(Spoiled Brat) syndrome and I made a note on my own clip board but not on the chart.
Drs on my floor will say a pt is 15, as in acting like an immature teenage girl, demanding and petulant.
Momma’s a physical therapist, she said that FLK is a diagnosis used for cranial-facial dyformity of an unknown cause. She’s also heard the term “high porcelain index”, to describe someone who sees themself (or their child, I guess) as unreasonably delicate.