The misuse of language has long been a burr under my saddle. People are no longer saying what they mean in words that can be grasped by anyone with a working experience of English. The trend is to use as many polysyllabic, (see?) words to convey a simple thought that can be crammed into a sentence. Then you have the obverse of the issue, deep philosophical thought condensed to a single phrase��Oh. Fer sure.� Or �Whatever.� Which can mean, �I agree with your entire modality of expressing your on-going concern with the matter at hand.� It can also mean the speaker was tuned out and the listener had to respond to something.
Health care is one of the classic language abusers. There is an opaque shield over the whole side show. Speaking in abbreviations is mandatory. Especially if you�re going to shorten a word that�s in Latin or Greek.
Typical conversation between nurses� Nurse#1- �Is 421-1 ready for the pre-op choley?� Nurse #2- �Yes. He�s getting P.A.T. and will be N.P.O. for a sub-clav insert as soon as the rezzie gets the H&P charted.� Nurse#1 �Great! Call admit and close off bed 2 because the choley has a psych hiss and may go 4 plus if he sundowns.�
Translation #1 � Is the bed ready for the guy going for gall bladder surgery?� #2 �Yes. He�s getting lab work done before he gets up here. He won�t be able to eat or drink and they are going to stick a big intravenous line under his clavicle as soon as young Dr. Kildare asks him questions and makes sure he has all his parts in place.� #1 �Great! Make sure he doesn�t get a roomate because he�s a nutcase and may get really cuckoo late at night.�
Nurses are by no means the worst, read on� The Radiology staff� �we need a repeat on the K.U.B� Poor penetration. Up the K.V. and modify the technique.� Meaning� �You screwed it up. Hang the patient up-side down and do him on �fry�.� The Respiratory staff �His P.H. is on the high side and his o2 sat is in the low numbers. Up the o2 and tube and bag him!� Meaning� �He�s not breathing!� The E.K.G. Tech �I�m getting a lot of Q R S widening with agonal rhythm and flat line.� Meaning� �His heart stopped beating!�
ALL TOGETHER NOW� �CODE 4!� or �CODE BLUE!� or �DR. HEARTSAVER!� or �OH SHIT!!!� Meaning� He�s dead. His Doctor, AKA The Attending �Transfer him to pathology and get a post.� Meaning..�He stayed dead and I�ll bet the nurses and resident doclings killed him.�
You need all the education you can get to make sense out of this alphabet soup.
Remember your first reader? A is for apple-B is for bear etc, etc. In this hurly -burly world even the apple isn�t the fruit that Eve scammed Adam with. It�s a computer. To wander even further off the track, It�s a �desktop P.C.�. B is still for bear but that old grizzly isn�t performing in the woods anymore. He moved to Wall Street and from the looks of things, he�s doing the same thing he did so effectively in the woods.
You can blame the �Yuppies� if you want to, everyone else does. Any upwardly mobile poseur would never admit to �Getting the Ford fixed in the gas station.� It would become, �Having the Beemer re-tooled by a preventative maintenance technician.�
They don�t write letters, but they will �Run it through the word processor and scan and fax it.� (I have always expected something resembling Guacamole dip to come out of anything called �Processor�) This is to intimidate those of us who write letters and snail mail them. A FAX machine?? I still have trouble ordering a pizza by phone. Give me a scanner and I could create chaos�
The Military has to be one of the worst at show and tell. �Body Count� sounds a tad nicer than �Dead�, but we know they don�t count the live ones. During the Gulf war things were explained by saying stuff like�A Naval Engagement in the Gulf.� Now it�s � Aerial Insertion into Afghani Caves.� Let�s go to the tape� It looks like someone threw a beer bottle at a map. The media has to give out whatever bits of information it can gather. There is a tendency to stretch out the news and occasionally the truth. One thing I can�t forgive is when they do an hour long explanation of 3 minutes of obfuscation.
Welcome to the Whimsical World of Politics
Politicians are shining examples of how to say nothing at all, but at great length. �At this point in time� equals �Now�. The pols are one of the reasons the newscasters have those five member panels to fully explain what Dick Cheney said. What he said was �I don�t know.� But the way he conveyed his personal dearth of information needed expansion. After the five member panel debates, examines, researches, reads between the lines reviews and interprets with pages of notes, it boils down to �He said he didn�t know.�
Oh. Fer Sure! Whatever�. The Pentagon will try to never use that 3 letter word. No, not S.E.X. The other one�W.A.R. They think war is better than sex and a lot easier to get started. Don�t alarm the civilians by using the �W� word. There was the �Korean Conflict�. Sounds like a lover�s spat unless you talk to someone who was in it. We sent �Advisors� to Vietnam. They didn�t want to call that a war either until we lost it. OOOPPPSSS!! I mean �re-deployed our strategic forces�, or whatever was left of them. Killing devices were called �Anti-Personnel Equipment� Chemical poisons like �Agent Orange� a topical defoliant which worked almost as well on plants as it did on humans, regardless of political persuasion. The boys in the Pentagon can�t seem to call a spade an entrenchment tool. This is the same group that spends $600 bucks on a toilet seat and buys pliers at a grand a pop. �YO,,General!! There�s a blue light special at K-Mart!�
Even the people we grew up with don�t exist semantically anymore. There was the kid down the block. Mom told us he was a �Juvenile Delinquent� because he came from a �Broken Home�. Today he would be known as an �Emotionally Disturbed Youth with Sociopathic Tendencies Due to a Dysfunctional Family System and Lack of Bonding to an Acceptable Male Role Model�. Well, well, well�Do I smell a Psychiatric Social Worker??
We can thank the �Psychs�, both workers and patients, for a real morass of �Meaningful Dialogue�. First and foremost�NO ONE IS CRAZY! They may have a �Borderline Sociopathic Personality Disorder.� Even psychopaths are no longer present. They got swallowed up in the crush of terminology, (Try to imagine a Tony Perkins- Janet Leigh movie called �SOCIO�.)
No one is a shiftless Bum. They are �Lacking in Motivation and have Low Self-Esteem�. Tell that to your brother-in -law and watch him motivate! Uncle Joe is not �Eccentric�, he has �Alzheimer�s Syndrome�. Now that explains why he built his house from discarded hubcaps! And Aunt Susie isn�t a �Hypochondriac�. These days she either has �Munchausen�s Syndrome� or is �Suffering from Supra-tentorial Symptoms�. Women no longer get �Hysterical� in modern psycho-babble, although that has been our right for millions of years. Now they �Inappropriately React to a Stress-Laden Situation�, and may require on-going counseling and therapy or possible �Anger Management Courses�.(I have always thought that finding out your old man or �Significant Other� has just taken out a third mortgage on the house so he can buy a $65,500 sports car would REQUIRE some hysteria and a possible assault with spaghetti!)
And there are now �Support Groups�. They are springing up like toadstools in the swamp. A group of people with the same problems,,,,,Er�Sorry.. Same �Dysfunctions� get together and �Share�. When they say to each other. �Boy Oh Boy! I have been there, done that and got the shirt!! They ain�t just playing jaw music. The �Counselor� may respond with �Thank you for sharing that with us.� but really be thinking, �whatEVER�� This new word imaging has changed a lot of familiar landmarks.
Like the garbageman.. He is now a �Sanitation Engineer� Don�t be too quick to Scoff at what you think is a lowly job. Donald Trump should have his income! (And the way things have gone for the �Donald� in the past, he should be so lucky!)
The cop on the corner is a �Public Safety Officer�, which I�m sure he prefers to being called everything else when he tickets your car.
The �Drugstore� now sells lawn furniture, jewelry, lottery tickets and all the amenities of gracious living. Of course, if you need a prescription filled you�d take it to the �Supermarket� because the �drugstore� charges too much and it takes forever just to find the aspirin.
The �Candystore� is still there. The owner is now a �Media-communications Merchandiser��? AHA! Yes, he sells newspapers. He also sells some of those magazines your brother used to read out behind the garage.
Now we come to some of my favorite word-meisters; PHYSICIANS & ATTORNEYS
Doctors and lawyers are experts on never saying exactly what they mean so that you, patient or client, won�t know what�s up. Which is why doctors see lawyers as land sharks maddened by blood lust and lawyers see doctors as semi-intelligent, alien life forms with a license to kill and get paid for it. (Lawyers only have a license to maim with intent.) They are still doing life support on dead languages. Latin and Greek are still with us and unless you are Zorba, this will keep anyone who is not a doctor or lawyer from understanding what they are doing.
The doctor says �You have a fluid filled cyst on the upper, outer quadrant of your dexter gluteus maximus. It may be idiopathic or iatrogenic in nature. I will alleviate it with localized surgical procedures and apply appropriate sterile dressing material.� Oh�Fer Sure. Would you gratefully give him a thousand smackers if he said, �You got a blister on your right butt cheek. I don�t know how you got it, maybe I gave it to you. I�m going to bust the blister and slap a band-aid on it.�
Mention this conversation to a lawyer and he will jolt out of his custom-designed, unborn-calfskin, multi-positional, executive lounge chair shrieking; �Malpractice of the grossest kind! Pain and suffering award! Emotional distress, loss of consortium! Due process�Litigate, litigate! Whereby, heretofore, Res Ipsa Loquitor, Status Quo, Quo Vadis, Etc., etc, etc!� Leaving you with the impression that you are now a prime contender for the �Golden Hind End� award worth a few million dollars. Just because the band-aid fell off when you pulled up your knickers. Face it,, You wouldn�t give the legal beagle a red cent if you thought all he was going to do was call the doctor�s insurance company to settle out of court for five thou, of which 35 cents is yours for a new band-aid.
PROFESSIONAL BUZZ WORDS
Although the word �professional� used to refer to people that mothers prayed their children would marry, someone with specialized training and who might even need a license to indulge themselves in a chosen career, it has developed a looser application. It has come to mean an attitude, (or lack of one) and can be used to cover many different situations. It can evoke a visual image. Clean-cut, Armani suit, muted colors-�A Professional Appearance�.
A counter person at a fast-food joint can be told they are lacking in professionalism. It can cover a multitude of sins from poorly combed hair to continual releasing of gastro-intestinal vapors at a high decibel level. How much simpler to attack one�s �Professionalism� rather than saying �You look and smell like a toxic waste dump.� Which may provoke a professional attitude like Mike Tyson�s.
A secretary,,, OOPPPSSS!! �Administrative Assistant� can be professional if she answers the phone promptly and doesn�t snap her bubble gum too loudly. If she wears a nice dark blue suit and a modest blouse that�s all the better. Of course if she answers the phone and puts you on hold for 45 seconds�..Shazaam!! UN-professional!!
In a medical setting they use it constantly. It has become more of a �buzz word� than �State-of-the-Art� or �Hi-Tech� the formerly reigning buzz words. It is yoked up with an up and coming �buzz�: Appropriate = professional and Inappropriate = unprofessional. Here are some scenes you might recognize: Someone in Administration--- �She�s a real professional.� It means, �She thinks just like I do, sneaky and under-handed.�
Member of peer group---�He�s a real professional!� meaning; �That schmuck absolutely refuses to discuss any differing points of view.� For a female-�The Ice-Maiden cometh.�
A Patient says; �Everyone here is very professional.� Instead of saying �NO ONE would give me a bedpan no matter how I begged and pleaded.�
When you are told �You�re acting inappropriately and you are being unprofessional.� It can mean , �Take the lamp shade off your head and stop doing handstands on the X-ray table.� Or it can be that you forgot to answer the phone by saying; �Welcome to Saint Facetious Hospital Radiology Department, This is Cindy and I will assist you in a moment so listen to the lovely �hold� music while I assist others who are in worse shape than you are. Thank You and God Bless.� You picked up the phone and said, Yeah? Saints X-ray, whaddya want?� Then there�s the �
PROFESSIONAL DRESS CODE
This is different things to different people. To Administration-Sterile, starchy crisp, knife-pleated uniforms. Impervious to stains, bullets and footprints. To the Department Head---Try to show up with most of the important parts covered, Men , should try to keep their fly closed. Ladies, If you must wear a micro-skirt, underwear is commendable. To the Staff--- Try not to wear the Grateful Dead T-shirt more than 3 days in a row, and make the attempt to get your clothes on right side out. To the Patient--- On my TV Show, only the surgeons wear the �scrubs�, So I must be VERY IMPORTANT!! A surgeon just emptied my bedpan and another surgeon brought me my lunch! WOW!!
PROFESSIONAL CODE OF ETHICS
Yeah��Whatever. What that means is; � No matter who you catch going at it in a closet or other less than public place, try not to tell more than 50 people. If it�s in a public place, try not to step on them and keep your eyes averted. Applause is optional.�
The next time someone says to you, �That was very Professional/Appropriate.� Study the context. Do they mean �You done good,� or �You cold, heartless reptile!�
And if you are told, �That�s Unprofessional/Inappropriate behavior!� Are they saying ; �For God�s Sake, Stop making this job look like it�s fun and it�s easy to work here.�----OR---- �Get the lamp shade off your head, Bozo.�
