#medical

A small walk-in clinic, no appointment needed.

Mortality and Morbidity conference — the meeting where the team dissects what went wrong.

Polite-sounding code for a morbidly obese patient.

When the patient's notes have vanished mid-ward-round.

Eyeball test for anaesthetic fitness — could you picture this patient browsing Woolworth's?

Patient's wet the bed, get the cleanup kit.

Return of Spontaneous Circulation — the pulse came back.

Dead Right There — the patient is gone before you even unbuckle the gurney.

The fee a UK doctor pockets for signing a cremation form.

Normal For Norfolk — UK doctors' code for an unusual or inbred-looking patient.

A proctologist.

Cruel hospital shorthand for bedridden elderly dementia patients.

Surgeon's pejorative for an internist.

A patient with endless vague complaints and nothing actually wrong.

Good Looking Mum — the discreet chart note for an attractive mother on the paeds ward.

The patient who's obviously, visibly, no-questions-about-it dying.

O-sign plus tongue hanging out — patient is basically done.

Phlebotomists and the lab techs who keep coming for your veins.

An unconscious patient lying with the mouth gaping open in an O — gravely ill.

"Unexplained Beer Injury" — the mystery bruise the drunk patient can't account for.

A patient turning up with a bizarre injury and an even more bizarre story to explain it.

The geriatric ward.

Ordering every test under the sun and hoping one of them lands.

Tried Everything Else, Try Homeopathy — sarcastic 'plan' for the hopeless case.

Surgical-team nickname for the anaesthetist.

Lights On But Nobody Home — patient who looks awake but isn't really there.

Pissed, Fell Over — UK ED chart note for a drunk who's hurt themselves.

Affectionate hospital nickname for the psychiatry team.

Patient who keeps turning up to A&E like it's a loyalty scheme.

Hospital slang for a motorcycle — a reliable pipeline of fresh organ donors.

Chart shorthand for a drunk patient.

A meeting held purely to work out whose fault the disaster was.

A difficult, unrewarding patient.

A consultant waving their hands around while talking utter bollocks.

British medical acronym: Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt.

First-time mum who keeps showing up sure she's in labour. She isn't.

Get Out of My Emergency Room — the old, chronic, hopeless patient ER docs dread.

Shorthand for appendicitis, the appendix, or whipping it out.

Horrendous + -oma — the spectacularly grim case nobody wants.

Mock-Latin diagnosis: "failure to cope."

Good for Parts Only — the patient who's not going to make it but could save several others.

Cotton wool — Birmingham's name for it, after the surgeon who invented the dressing.

Patient who's back in A&E within days of being discharged.

Shine a penlight in the mouth and the whole head would glow — patient with very little upstairs.

Circling The Drain: a patient who isn't going to make it.

A patient's lost control of their bowels and someone has to clean it up.

An obstetrician — or anyone whose job is catching the kid on the way out.

Manually pumping air into a patient's lungs with a handheld Ambu bag.

A confused elderly woman clutching her handbag in the hospital bed — a soft sign of dementia.

A surgeon who operates aggressively and off the guidelines.

Funny Looking Kid — paediatric shorthand for a child whose features hint at an undiagnosed syndrome.

If more than five orifices have tubing in them, the patient won't make it.

Fake-Latin label for a patient convinced they're dying when they're fine.

Failure To Die — the frail, dying patient who somehow keeps not dying.

Mature content — open to view.

Mock lab result meaning the patient isn't very bright.

Varicose vein surgery.

Doctor shorthand for 'no abnormality detected' — and the cynical joke version, 'not actually done.'

Found On Orthopaedics Barely Alive — jibe at ortho for letting medical issues slide.

A surgeon.

Hypoglycemic episode — patient's blood sugar has cratered.

A rare diagnosis when the common one is far more likely.

Hospital slang for an obese patient — from BMI.

Beer belly — as if the patient grew a thyroid problem out of their waistband.

An indwelling urinary catheter — the balloon-tipped tube that stays in the bladder.

A doctor's polished shrug when a dying patient asks how long they've got.

UK A&E doctor's fee for writing up a police assault report.

A fake, for-show resuscitation done so the family thinks everything was tried.