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Top 40 Slang Terms Nurses Use

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19. Professional Patient

Definition: A person who feigns illnesses for various reasons. PPs often include malingerers filling a psychological need, drug runners seeking prescriptions or drugs to be sold later, and those with Munchausen syndrome.

Usage: Man, this guy’s definitely a professional patient. As soon as we offered morphine, he quickly said it made him sick and asked for Dilaudid.

20. Pumpkin Positive

Definition: The notion that a patient’s brain is so small that shining a penlight into her mouth will result in her empty head glowing like a Halloween pumpkin.

Usage: Well, I just had a patient admit to using Smucker’s as contraceptive jelly. Needless to say she’s pumpkin positive.

Synonyms: dumb, stupid, dolt, idiot, moron

21. Avatar Blues

Definition: The depression experienced by a select few people after having viewed James Cameron’s 2009 box office hit movie Avatar. The movie depicts an idyllic world with a tight-knit tribe of aliens battling to save their planet from human invaders. Themes in the movie include analogs to modern-day problems like global warming, war and capitalism, threaded together with a love story. The movie’s most prevalent feature is its cinematic effects, particularly 3-D.

Viewers leaving the theaters have been said to reflect on their current life or how authentically it paralleled the destruction of our own earth, and a helpless feeling.

CNN was the first to report this phenomenon, and it is disputed whether this is a true clinical problem or glorified reporting.

Usage: Person 1: Jack’s not coming out with us tonight—what’s going on? Person 2: He fell victim to the Avatar Blues. Same thing happened to him in 1977…but that could have just been his struggle with puberty.

22. Botox Raton

Definition: City in Florida that used to be called “Boca Raton,” but they changed the name for obvious reasons.

Usage: Halfway between Palm Beach and Miami, there’s Botox Raton.

23. Fits

Definition: Sudden attack or seizure of muscle activity.

Usage: We were watching The Biggest Loser on TV and she just started having fits.

24. Fighting Darwin

Definition: A patient is fighting Darwin if he or she refuses essential treatment through stubbornness or stupidity.

Usage: She’s refusing all medical care because it’s the Sabbath. Boy, she’s really fighting Darwin.