Things you'll hear.

If you're ever in the hospital you may hear a different language.  This is known as medical jargon or lingo.  It can get pretty confusing, but when I first got into nursing school this was like taking a foreign language and I had to catch on fast.  We use so many abbreviations that really we have great words for in the English language.  I don't know why we don't just use those words.  Maybe it all came about so we could talk code in front of a patient and they would have no idea what we were talking about.
So you might hear things like:


"His UA came back clear, but his BA was .134.  ETOH present."
      -This means we were looking at a URINALYSIS to check what drugs were in his system and the BLOOD ALCOHOL level.  ETOH means ALCOHOL.  In this case it was high.  Normal limit is .08 and below.  Anything above is completely drunk.  We had a guy last week with a BA of .663.  He'll be drunk for a week.


"The patient is ambulatory, voiding, but is still NPO."
       - The patient is walking, peeing, but still can't have any food or drink.  NOTHING PER ORAL.


"NGT to LIS."
           -NASOGASTRIC TUBE to LOW INTERMITTENT SUCTION.  You better hope you never have to have one of these.  This is a tube going through your nose to your stomach,  it sucks out all your stomach acid before it can go anywhere else.


"Lortab 5-500 1-2 tab QID PRN pain."
         -LORTAB 5 HYDROCODONE 500 ACETAMINAPHIN 1 TO 2 TABLETS FOUR TIMES A DAY AS NEEDED FOR PAIN."  Does that make any sense?


"NS at KVO."
      -NORMAL SALINE, which is salt water, at KEEP VEIN OPEN.  We use this to keep a IV viable. Fluids continuously running through keep a vein open, hence the genius abbreviation: KVO, so creative.


"Pt has NKA, PERL, bowel tones X's 4, and lungs and heart WNL."
     -Patient has NO KNOWN ALLERGIES, PUPILS EQUAL AND REACTIVE, bowel tones IN ALL FOUR QUADRANTS, lungs and heart WITHIN NORMAL LIMITS.


Now here's a totally hypothetical patient.  Not real.  Just for fun, let's see if you can get any of these.


Pt is 55 yr old female c/o SOB.  Sats are 84% of 5L Venti mask.  A/O, but agitated.  Fluids are wide open to IV's in bilateral AC's.  NTG given sublingual, and MS 4mg pushed. No chest pain at this time.  Lets get a EKG, CXR- PA and Lateral, CBC, BMP, BNP, CK-MB."
          -Whoa, that was a lot there.  Here you go: Patient is a 55 year old female complaining of shortness of breath.  Oxygen saturation is 84%(pretty low- we like above 90%) on 5 liters of oxygen through a venti mask(special mask providing  concentrated oxygen).  Alert and oriented, but agitated.  Fluids are wide open(flowing freely into vein-meaning going in fast) to intravenous lines in both antecubital veins(the vein in the crook of the elbow).  Nitroglycerin given under the tongue and Morphine Sulphate 4mg pushed.  No chest pain at this time.  Lets get an Echocardiogram, Chest X-Ray- Posterier, Anterior, and Lateral, Complete Blood Count, Basic Metabolic Panel, B Natriuretic Peptide(measures heart fcn- I mean function :) and creatine kinase-MB (which measures muscle damage in the heart).


So based on this, what do you think this patient is having?  Who can get it right?  Let's hear it in the comments.  Did this give you a better idea of what everyone is talking about when in the hospital?  This will get you started, but is no where near the end of it.  Too many terms and abbreviations to list, but at least now I can say I speak a foreign language!