The medical dictionary ‘tongue-in-cheek' edition

Abstract

Medical communication is often so formal, and one can't help thinking that sometimes a more light-hearted approach would be nice. We recently attended an advanced paediatric life support course in Pretoria (may we suggest that all doctors treating children should think of doing this course?), and on one of the days our group was in a silly mood. Attempting to describe perfusion in a child who isn't shocked but also doesn't have perfect perfusion, we came up with the term 'good-ish'. It felt so right, and everybody could identify with what we meant - '-ish': something that falls outside a medical tick-box; 'normal-ish': something's not quite right but one won't put one's medical head on the block; 'ok-ish': better, but who knows what will happen?