Gassers and Slashers: Doctor's Slang by Vivian Cook

Every group has its own jargon. Sometimes this is the necessary technical terms that go with the job of being a pilot, a lawyer, and so on. But the jargon also shows someone belongs to a particular group whether car mechanics, a teenage gang or the Conservative Party Monday Club. Euphemisms and black humour are also a way of coping with unpleasant or threatening aspects of a job – a way of pretending to have a thick skin. And such jargon can let out repressed feelings that could not be expressed directly.

Doctors’ slang shows all of these effects. Doctors need technical terms, they form a distinctive group and they have to deal with patients in tragic circumstances. Doctors’ slang used to be found on actual patients’ notes; new openness regulations and people’s willingness to sue mean that they are now less likely to be committed to paper. The following examples come from a study by researchers in four hospitals, three in London and one in Cambridge. Some are whole words, some acronyms using the first letters of words in a phrase.

Names of semi-medical conditions
GOK	God only knows
acopia	the inability to cope
cheerioma	a fatal tumour
DOA	dead on arrival
rule of five	A patient’s condition is critical if they have more than five pieces of equipment attached to them
LOBNH	lights on but nobody home
PDE	pissed, denies everything
TATT	tired all the time
UBI	unexplained beer injury
TEETH	tried everything else, try homeopathy
Medical life
metabolic clinic	the coffee or tea room
ash cash	money for signing cremation forms
the departure lounge	geriatric ward
expensive scare	intensive care
granny dumping	bringing old people into hospital before bank holidays
feet up general	quiet general hospital
pathology outpatients	the mortuary
Colleagues
Freud Squad, trick cyclists, pest control	psychiatrists
pox docs	staff of the genital-urinary clinic
slashers	surgeons
gassers	anaesthetists
inbred	doctors whose parents were doctors
Patients
crumble, wrinkly, coffin dodger	elderly patient
GROLIES	Guardian reader of limited intelligence in ethnic skirt
YSM	yummy scrummy mummy
LOL	little old lady
SIG	stroppy, ignorant girl
CLL	chronic low life
crispy critter	severe burns victim