Definition:

A doctor whose parents are also doctors.

Usage:

Nurse 1: What's with Dr. Smith's ego trip?

Nurse 2: I think he's an inbred.

Created Dec 02, 2009

Definition:

It's a patient privilege of requesting an examination and evaluation of a health condition by a second physician to verify or challenge the diagnosis by a first physician. The situation is most likely to arise when an examination by a first physician results in a recommendation for surgery or experimental treatment.

Usage:

I'm going to get a second opinion.

Created Jan 13, 2010

Definition:

Either a judgment that further medical treatment of a patient would have no useful result or a medical treatment whose success is possible although reasoning and experience suggest that it is highly improbable.

Usage:

What do I think? Medical futility.

Created Jan 13, 2010

Definition:

The four main causes of unexplained restlessness, agitation, or combativeness in patients with altered mental status: hypoxemia, hypoglycemia, hypovolemia, high bladder.

Usage:

She was hitting on three of the four Hs when I popped into her room an hour ago.

Created Jan 14, 2010

Definition:

A diagnosis which may be faddish, not proven to exist, or physiologically explained. It could also refer to a diagnosis described without specificity, and thus so broadly inclusive to the point of being scientifically useless

Usage:

Well, we could go with your wastebasket diagnosis, or we could stop trying to be Greg House and figure out what's really wrong with him.

Created Jan 14, 2010

Definition:

Intensive care specialist. A hospital-based critical care physician working primarily in an ICU.

Usage:

Oh, him? Yeah, he's been an intensivist on this unit for the past ten years.

Synonyms:

critical care physician, intensive care specialist

Created Jan 16, 2010

Definition:

An expensive, extensive, intensive, and sometimes painful diagnostic evaluation initiated by a particular patient complaint.

Usage:

He came in with his x-rays in hand and was complaining that he had the "worst headache of his life," so we gave him a million-dollar workup.

Created Jan 18, 2010

Definition:

A physician who has been sanctioned for serious state and federal offenses and placed on a list by the Public Citizen's Health Research Group.

Usage:

Umm, he's a questionable doctor. He's been sanctioned for handing out painkillers like Tic Tacs.

Synonyms:

impaired physician

Created Jan 21, 2010

Definition:

A popular phrase for the mental and financial consequences of being sued for health care-related activities.

Usage:

Malpractice stress syndrome is in full effect for my neighbor, or as you may know him from the paper, "Dr. Perp."

Created Jan 22, 2010

Definition:

Infectious disease doctor.

Usage:

When the ID doc came around, he said she was fine.

Created May 19, 2010