Nurse Supervisor Jobs >> Browse Articles >> Work-Life Balance

Top 40 Slang Terms Nurses Use

Featured Author:

Scrubs Magazine

Scrubs Magazine is the lifestyle website for and about nurses. Here you’ll find weekly giveaways, “best of” lists, and both the lighter side and the serious side of nursing with cartoons, scrubs style DOs and DON’Ts, beauty, health and wellness. Scrubsmag.com also features revealing stories from nurse bloggers ranging from a newly minted nurse to a seasoned RN to a misunderstood male nurse. Follow us on Twitter and join our conversation on Facebook.

More articles from this author:

• Expectations From Your Nurse Manager
• Top 10 Traits of an Effective Nurse Manager
• You Know You're an LPN When...

25. Chart Dehiscence

Definition: When a patient’s chart is dropped and everything falls out.

Usage: Oh! Not again! Second chart dehiscence of the night!

26. Pack-years

Definition: A crude indicator of a person’s cumulative cigarette consumption, equal to the number of packs of cigarettes smoked/day multiplied by years of consumption.

Usage: We should really measure his consumption in pack-years. It’s probably close to 150.

27. Jimmy Leg

Definition: An uncontrollable shake or tremor of the leg.

Usage: I couldn’t fall asleep next to her, dude she’s got the jimmy legs.

Synonyms: jimmy legs, the shakes

28. Baci

Definition: Bacitracin. An antibiotic used in wound irrigation operatively. Pronounced bass-e (bass like the fish).

Usage: Tech to relief tech: “This has baci in it.”

Synonyms: bacitracin

29. Band-Aid Hospital

Definition: A popular term for a healthcare facility that provides for minimal care of significance.

Usage: I was hoping to get a job at a Level I trauma center, not at a Band-Aid hospital. I guess you don’t always get what you want. I learned that from the Rolling Stones.

Noctor alert!

30. Noctor

Definition: The nurse who just came off of a six-week training course and acts as though she is a doctor.

Usage: What’s with the new noctor on the floor? Can you believe she had to gall to demand the patient with the Swan?

31. Pharm Party

Definition: Where kids get together to share drugs pilfered from their parents’ pill bottles. Painkillers such as Percocet, Vicodin, OxyContin and other similar drugs are preferred for their “feel good” and numbing effect. Alcohol is routinely combined while taking the drugs.

There have been reports of kids openly sharing the pills in one communal bowl with no identifying information about the drug; sometimes the drugs are presented mixed together in a bag they call “trail mix.”

Some experts argue there is a lack of substantive data to label this as a phenomenon or a growing problem, and is more likely something sensationalized by media, law enforcement and educators.

Usage: Person 1: What do you guys want to do tonight? Person 2: Pharm party at Andy’s. I’m trying to get some of my brother’s OxyContin.

Synonyms: pharma party, pharming party, pill party

Created by hollywood, Mar 16, 2010