Just imagine you have to help the public 24/7. You’re around death and disease all the time. You’re eventually going to have to crack a few jokes and make some slang to cut through it all.
The sense of humor a doctor is probably dark and here are some slang words, acronyms and phrases that are either going to make you laugh or regret that you did.
- AALFD – If you’re being clinical, you might call it “drug-seeking behavior,” but if you’re being slangy, it’s AALFD: Another Asshole Looking For Drugs.
- ATS – If a patient is faking an illness, a doctor might say they are suffering from ATS, or “acute thespian syndrome.”
- Beemer: Some doctors call obese or overweight patients “beemers” because of their high BMI.
- Celestial Discharge: A dead patient is said to have been given “celestial discharge” from the hospital. See also: D/C to J.C. and ECU.
- Code Brown: Where “code blue” indicates a critical situation where a patient requires immediate emergency care, “code brown” means someone pooped and it needs to be cleaned up. See VLE.
- CTD: If you overhear your doctor saying you are “CTD,” it means you’re “circling the drain,” or “close to death.” Either way, it’s bad times.
- D/C to J.C.: This stands for “discharged to Jesus;” in other words, dead.
- Dyscopia: This faux-medical term refers to patients or their family having difficulty coping.
- ECU: If a patient is transferred to the Eternal Care Unit, they have died.
- FLK– This acronym stands for “Funny Looking Kid,” it was/is used by pediatricians and refers to children with nonspecific facial dysmorphia. It’s been around since at least this 1969 issue of JAMA where a doctor decries the term as lacking in compassion.
- FTD: This acronym has two opposite meaning. In some hospitals it means “fixin’ to die.” In others, it means “failure to die,” and is used to describe elderly patients who remain alive against all odds.
- FOS: This acronym for “full of shit” is apparently popular among pediatricians as a way to describe a constipated child. It’s extra useful because if a parent asks what it means, you can tell them it means “full of stool.”
- Frequent Flyer: According to freedictionary.com, this slang term refers to “A patient who is admitted repeatedly to the same hospital for the same non-resolving cluster of symptoms.”
- GOMER: This stands for “get out of my emergency room.” It was popularized in the 1978 novel House of God where it is used to describe “a patient who is frequently admitted with complicated but uninspiring and incurable conditions.”
- Hollywood Code: Pretend to work on patient who is clearly past saving, usually for the sake of their family.
- Incarceritis: This term describes an illness that occurs when jail is in the patient’s immediate future.
- Krumping (or “crumping”): This does not refer to a patient energetically dancing. In an unofficial medical context, krumping means a patient’s condition is rapidly deteriorating.
- Status dramaticus: A play on the medical term “status asthmaticus,” this term refers to a patient who is exaggerating their symptoms. It’s a more colorful way of saying “malingering.”
- Social injury of the rectum: This phrase is the opposite of most these terms in that it’s a polite way of describing the condition of people who present to the hospital with something stuck in their butt.
- TFTB: This means “too fat to breathe.” It’s a blunt description used in place of the actual medical condition “obesity hypoventilation syndrome.”
- VLE: A “valuable life experience,” refers to giving an unpleasant job to an underling, like after a code brown.
- Walkie-Talkie: This refers to elderly patients who are still mobile and verbal. “Walkie-talkie, still use the potty,” can be said as well.
- Yellow Submarine: This term refers to an obese patient with jaundice.
We told you! It gets weird here! So What’s Up Doc? *Bugs Bunny voice*. Check out our source, lifehacker.com for even more doctor slang that will shock you back to life!
