‘Doctors’ lingo being enriched by urban slang’

Doctors have always used a tribal vocabulary to communicate between themselves, but now their secret lingo is been enriched by the electronic media and urban slang, the British Medical Journal reports.

Doctors have always used a tribal vocabulary to communicate between themselves, but now their secret lingo is been enriched by the electronic media and urban slang, the British Medical Journal reports on Thursday.

Paul Keeley, a consultant in the department of palliative medicine at Glasgow Royal Infirmary in Scotland wrote to the weekly BMJ to report a sample of new words that British doctors use among themselves.

They include: — DISCO BISCUITS: The clubbers’ drug ecstasy. As in: “The man in cubicle three looks like he’s taken one too many disco biscuits.” — HASSELHOFF: Term for any patient who shows up in the emergency room with an injury for which there is a bizarre explanation. Source: Baywatch actor David Hasselhoff, who hit his head on a chandelier while shaving. The broken glass severed four tendons and an artery in his right arm.

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— AGNOSTICATION: A substitute for prognostication. Term used to the describe the usually vain attempt to answer the question: “How long have I got, doc?” — BLAMESTORMING: Apportioning of blame after the wrong leg or kidney is removed or some other particularly egregious foul-up happens.

— 404 MOMENT: The point in a doctor’s ward round when medical records cannot be located. Comes from World Wide Web error message, “404 — document not found.”