Is medical slang GPO?

Dr Fox fears the best (read: worst) of it is
doomed for not being PC

By Theo H Sands

Doctor slang is CTD ("circling the drain"), it's almost LOBNH ("lights out but nobody home") and may even be close to GPO ("good for parts only"). British allergist, Dr Adam Fox wants to save it but he's getting desperate, almost desperate enough for TEETH ("tried everything else, try homoeopathy").

Should it disappear entirely, Dr Fox would grieve. He's spent four years gathering more than 200 of the colourful acronyms the profession uses to secretly flag troublesome patients. He says that fewer doctors attach the coded zingers to charts for fear of trouble should the records end up in court. He recounts the story of one unnamed doctor who had scribbled TTFO on a chart, which in slang parlance translates to an expletive meaning something to the effect of "Told to get lost." In court, when the judge asked him what it meant, the quick-thinking MD replied, "To take fluids orally."

The acronyms join the thousands of more legitimate ones that are used constantly in medical papers. Many are known the world over but some are more local. British doctors would understand that NFN meant "Normal for Norfolk" or FLK, "funny looking kid" or, possibly, GROLIES, "Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt." Others are more universal, such as LOBNH, "Lights On But Nobody Home" and CNS-QNS, "Central Nervous System - Quantity Not Sufficient." Then there's the DBI, or "dirt bag index" which is calculated by multiplying the number of missing teeth by the number of tattoos to determine the number of days since the patient last showered or took a bath.

Many acronyms have to do with the dangers associated with drinking too much. PFOs have sustained injuries from falling over; PGTs, on the other hand, are drunks who get into fights and "get thumped." In Brazil, a PIMBA, roughly translated, means a "swollen-footed drunk run-over beggar."

Dr Fox worries lest an increasingly politically correct society forces physicians to wean themselves from the use of these terms. Perhaps the doctor need not worry. MD slang thrives on the internet.

For more, go to www.shartwell.freeserve.co.uk/humor-site/medical-acronyms.htm.