Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Read This---Stat

I read that the t.v. program, "E.R.," has its final episode this week. I never was a fan of it; for me, the old "St. Elsewhere" and the current "House" have been the best hospital dramas. Anyway, when I have watched "E.R.," I noticed that the doctors and nurses call out "stat" many times. "Stat," of course, is short for the Latin word, "statim," which in turn means "immediately." Let's see if I have this straight: Medical personnel take the word, "immediately," which they think is too long and consumes valuable treatment time, and substitute "statim" for it. But then they think that "statim" is too long, so they reduce "statim" to "stat." I'm confused. In this process, how could they have overlooked the already-available, one-syllable English word, "now"? Go figure.

-Old Gargoyle

1 comment:

The Cajun Gal said...

Doctors..... their handwriting is terrible and they always ignore the obvious things (like lupus).

My most recent blog is about you. That's probably hard to believe on April Fool's Day, but trust me, doc.