My boyfriend in college was really bad about this. He was getting his master’s in entomology (with a concentration in disease vectors) and had been raised by a dad who worked for the CDC. He wanted to follow in dad’s footsteps. And he sounded flat-out pompous, because he had been incorporating that kind of language into his daily speech since he was a teenager. I can appreciate that getting by in grad school and that kind of career requires a degree of pomposity and ceremony (and jargon), but not having an off-switch is very off-putting to normal people.
I ascertain that most of you don’t like people who use jargon outside of the work environment.
True, you should get home, kick off your shoes, and shift paradigms.
The phrase “as evidenced by” is so beaten into nurses during school while writing nursing care plans that it has its own official abbreviation: a/e/b. It’s how we list what is/will be the criteria by which we will know that an objective has been achieved, or the criteria used to determine a nursing diagnosis. Please don’t hate us for that. Most nurses I know would no more be able to stop saying that than they would be to stop breathing.
I know why it’s done. It’s still illogical and inefficient. I don’t hate you if you do it but I hate when it’s done and think your mentality is why it continues. My wife is a nurse and never uses this phrase btw. You can alter your behavior if you want to. If you lack that flexibility you shouldn’t be a nurse in the first place.
I think that people who are into gender identity politics are particularly bad about this. Using lots of confusing, pedantic genderspeak is not a way to gain any sympathy or understanding.
My mentality is why this continues? What mentality would that be, exactly? For the record, I rarely use the dreaded phrase except when writing care plans, where it is appropriate and very logical and efficient. Perhaps you should investigate ways tobe more flexible in accepting people who use phrases that you don’t particularly care for.
Your mentality that it’s reasonable, defensible and that criticizing it is just being a big meanie. If you can’t examine your own shortcomings and you can’t accept other people pointing them out then you perpetuate this kind of language corruption. What else should I be more flexible about? Nurses that let CNAs make nursing evaluations for them? Nurses that constantly work tired? Nurses that chart everything at the end of the shift?
I’m not saying the a/e/b phrase being allowed to continue will send us down a slippery slope but it is not a valid argument that “oh it’s OK like it is.” when you can’t refute that it’s stupid and inefficient in any logical way. Go on and be OK with it but don’t keep bristling about it in the thread if you don’t have anything constructive to say.
Wow, you sure assume a lot of things from the use of one phrase! How on earth does this turn into to poor nursing care? ** I** wasn’t bristling,** I **didn’t call you a big meanie, and you have no idea of my shortcomings, if any.
If this is the biggest thing you have in your life to get pissy about*, congratulations.
*a/e/b your anger over three words that no one is asking you to use. Have a nice day!
Wait, can we take a step back and find out why a/e/b is bad? Why it’s a “shortcoming”?
I mean, annoying, sure. Hardly ever used in once you get out of school, sure. But why is it bad? Why is it poor nursing to have concrete signs, symptoms and lab values to formulate our nursing diagnosis? Should we throw runes instead?
Mine is people who insist on saying “utilize” when they could just say “use.”
I used to work with a woman who thought it made her sound smart to write that somebody “indicated” something. “He indicated that he had seen the accident.” How did he indicate that? Did he say it? Sign language? Semaphore? And this woman worked for a daily newspaper! Half a dozen editors told her to knock it off and she kept doing it. “John Smith, 62, of Maple Street, indicated that . . .”
Uh, I think I can. It’s a three-word phrase that has no substitute and doesn’t obfuscate anything. Your hate is unfounded.
You can’t exactly blame your colleagues. If you’ve spent eight years in formal higher education plus years in internship and residency, all the while reading articles whose writers use such phraseology, and being taught by researchers and clinicians who use similar jargon in their own professional correspondence, lectures, and seminars, it tends to rub off on you. While I probably agree with you on non-technical corporate jargon words like “actionee” and so on, there’s definitely a place for precision and accuracy in any kind of setting where different words actually do mean different things. “As evidenced by” is obviously not quite the same as “because.”