Medicine is a strange business. On the one hand, people are always emphasising the importance of communication. On the other, the terms that are used are so opaque and cloaked in euphemisms that it takes a good few years to actually understand what is being said to you. Knowing what people are really talking about can save you a whole heap of trouble.

"Would you like to examine the abdomen?"

This ostensibly polite question usually comes from a distinguished consultant who has 10 medical students circled around a patient's bed. The request is usually directed at the most scruffy student, slouching behind the others, who has been rooting about in his or her white coat pocket for some chewing gum, or whispering furtively to their neighbour. The immaculately clad swots smirk as the targeted student writhes and gawps like an ant in treacle. Tip: The question is a rhetorical one. Do not reply, "Cheers, mate, but actually, I'd rather not."

"Give the medication PRN"

Well, why don't they just say 'as required?' I still have a crystal clear recollection of a formal grand round involving six chin-stroking psychiatric consultants, a scattering of serious registrars, a sea of sombre nurses and an ocean of stressed house officers. Yours truly, a greenish medical student at the time, piped up loudly with 'why is the patient getting the chlorpromazine PRN instead of orally?'

"Caudal/caudad/superior/inferior/
lateral/medial/dorsal/ventral"

It beats me why these words are still used. It took me as long to decipher the terms in my anatomy book as it took to learn them. Presumably, saying a nerve moves headwards or toewards is not sophisticated enough for doctors.

"The patient has an ethanol problem"

This term is used when a (usually pompous) doctor wants to say, "The patient's always pissed," but feels that it lacks the necessary gravity. It is usually stated with a supercilious smirk as if the speaker has never ever indulged in a teensy drink too many. A hidden camera at the consultants' Christmas bash would show that this is not the case, and the person in question is just as capable of becoming red faced and jolly as the rest of us.

"A colostomy was fashioned"

Fashioned?? Can you think of a more inappropriate word? Was it the Paris fashion or the London one? Did Saint Laurent do it with a sash or did Galliano create it in silk? What's wrong with saying a colostomy was performed?

"Phylogenetically, the archicerebellum is represented by the flocculonodular lobe and the fastigial nucleus. The dorsal vermis and flocculonodular lobe are together called the vestibulocerebellum"

This reminds me of why I nearly gave up medicine in the first year. It still makes me want to cry.

"We'd better check the plasma cobalt"

The royal "we" is frequently employed in medicine by a person of superior caste as an instruction to a being of inferior standing. When the consultant announces it to the air in front of a gaggle of 15 visiting registrars, lecturers, reseach fellows, etc, all heads swivel towards the lowly house dog. However, beware: like semitrained rotweilers, house dogs can turn savage themselves due to a mixture of stress, bitterness, sleep deprivation, and frustration. They are then likely to employ the royal "we" themselves, and in this case, the only being of lowlier rank is the student. And the test in question usually involves hourly blood samples being sent through the night on ice to a laboratory in a hospital across the country.

"Would you like to assist?"

Warning bells should sound at this seemingly innocuous question from a surgeon. If you can think of anything else to do--be it taking blood, cleaning the floor, scrubbing the toilets, etc, make your excuses. "Assisting" means tugging on a retractor for four hours while the surgeon sweats and curses.

Bovine, ovine, etc"

I know, I know. If they called them "cow" and "sheep" it would be easier for all concerned. And the UK government's researchers would not have spent three years examining cows' brains instead of sheeps' brains in the project on sheepoid spongiform encephalopathy just because of a smudge on the labels.