The Secret Language of Doctors: Cracking the Code of Hospital Culture, Dr Brian Goldman, c. 2014. 610.14GOL.
A must read for prospective medical students before they to go medical school.
Brian Goldman:
- ER physician: Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital
- host of the CBC Radio's award-winning program, White Coat, Black Art
- TEDx talk about medical errors
- pediatric residency, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto
Brings back a lot of memories.
A most privileged profession.
The best part for me: jargon that was "new" to me. Example, regarding a morbidly obese patient:
- beemer: BMI, morbidly obese
- a clinic unit: 200 pounds; this particular patient, at 600 pounds, was three clinic units
Argot:
- argot: "argo" -- a more or less secret vocabulary and idiom peculiar too a particular group
- a French word
- coined by Pierre Guiraud, 1628
- le argotiers, a name given to a group of thieves; his 1862 novel, Les Misérables, used by Victor Hugo, described argo as "the language of misery"
- argo: also referred to as a cant or cryptolect
- vocabulary, its own grammar, syntax
Author says he learned about 20,000 technical terms that laypeople don't know -- during medical school
- everything from aphasia to zygoma
Every page is a page turner!
Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NYC:
- entrance on Fifth Avenue: for religious Jews
- entrance on Madison Avenue: used by residents of East Harlem
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