It's not an insult if nurse calls you 'S.O.B.'

[flashl]

Medical schools try to quash use of sometimes-demeaning shorthand to describe patients, conditions

If you're a hospital patient and a doctor refers to you as a "rock" it's probably not a compliment, but try not to take offense if a nurse mutters "S.O.B." in describing your condition.

...

Some of the jargon is harmless or even useful; for instance, "S.O.B." usually is an acronym for "shortness of breath."

But medical educators are trying to curtail the use of more callous language that can lead doctors to think of their patients as obstacles to overcome, rather than human beings deserving of empathy.

...

Medical residents tend to pick up such terms quickly during training, and many said the lingo ranges from humorous to downright nasty. A patient not in obvious need of surgery may get the tag "lgfd"—short for "looks good from the door."

But a "rock" describes someone whose condition never seems to get better or worse, creating a hassle for doctors who often see their job as moving patients smoothly through the system.

"It's implying that these human lives, these suffering people, are no more than mere insults to you," said Dr. John Schumann, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center who tries to prevent medical students from adopting crude habits of speech.

Chicago Tribune

[nichomachus]

1. However, "gomer" is an insult

It's reserved for people who are seriously obnoxious, usually while not being seriously ill. It stands for "Get out of my emergency room."

"Hey Joe, we've got a real gomer in Room 5."

[Warpy]

2. It refers to patients who are generally elderly, demented,

incontinent and combative who have been brought into an emergency room on a Friday evening in what is generally called a "nursing home dump."

SOB is the thing families misunderstand most frequently when they see it on a chart.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

3. For years patients who were dead or had little chance

of living in mass casualty situations were given a black triage tag. Not long ago, a news camera at a mass casualty event recorded a triage officer telling people to "move the black patients over there, we aren't treating them." Needless to say it caused quite the uproar. There has been talk of changing the tags.

David

[trotsky]

4. Oh, wow.

Yeah, I suppose I can see how someone "not in the know" might possibly misunderstand that! :)