Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 July 2010 04:33:57
I often find it hard to remember the "proper doctor words" for describing things in my notes. If I can come up with a respectable/intelligible but not official term for something and no-one within earshot can come up with a better idea, I'm ok with that. Sometimes even if I know it, I will avoid using the technical term if it seems likely that most readers won't understand what I'm saying.
And sometimes I just like to use technical words for simple things because it makes me giggle that I know that "eructation" means "burp".
I was amused the other day to read that a patient suffered a skin tear "about the size of an average biscuit".
The process of identifying the average biscuit makes my head hurt - obviously there is the size factor which is not so bad (but then volume makes it more complicated), and averaging shapes is not beyond the realms of possibility, but when we start thinking about the average flavour, average texture (are all textures on the one spectrum? I'm not sure that they are) and the average non-biscuit additions (icing, chocolate, jam) it becomes VERY MURKY.
I think the median biscuit would be a better measure.