What exactly does "stat" mean?

[phoenixsupra]

I know it means super doubleplus hurry. But where does it come from? I know pimping comes from the acronym 'put in my place'. Is stat also an acronym or abbreviation? Just curious.

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[kendall]

I know it means super doubleplus hurry. But where does it come from? I know pimping comes from the acronym 'put in my place'. Is stat also an acronym or abbreviation? Just curious.

from Latin, statim, immediately

k

 

[phoenixsupra]

Thanks

 

[edmadison]

from Latin, statim, immediately

k

See, I thought it meant do it as soon as the nurse, tech or labs decides they want to do it.

Ed

 

[Boomer]

See, I thought it meant do it as soon as the nurse, tech or labs decides they want to do it.

Ed

In my hospital, that IS what it means.

We've tried to get the "Physician's Orders" sheets changed to read "Physician's Suggestions."

 

[pikachu]

I know it means super doubleplus hurry. But where does it come from? I know pimping comes from the acronym 'put in my place'. Is stat also an acronym or abbreviation? Just curious.

hmm, I thought "pimping" came from German, "Puempfrage," meaning to pump the student with questions. in German, Puemp (or u with umlaut) sounds a lot like "pimp."

See the super-funny article in an old JAMA:

JAMA. 1989 Nov 10;262(18):2541-2.

 

[roja]

In our lab, it means please don't throw this sample on my crashing septic patient in the trash and maybe could I please get the troponin in the next two hours?

 

[toofache32]

I always just assumed that "pimping" was from "pimp"...as in: My pimp b!+ch-slapped me for no reason.

 

[EMBess]

Whoa, there's a lot of whining about nursing staff here! Be careful...I know here it's just venting, but it's not a cool way to generalize. Nurses/techs/etc do a lot of running around that you've never had to even think about, and there are things that all docs do that make their lives more difficult without us even knowing it.

So, everyone think a warm fuzzy about that nurse/tech/etc that has or will prevent you from looking like a fool one day...and remember that the good goes with the bad for all of us, and that we all work hard.

 

[edmadison]

In our lab, it means please don't throw this sample on my crashing septic patient in the trash and maybe could I please get the troponin in the next two hours?

So at my old medical center the lab was so slow that everyone started ordering their labs STAT. Now STAT means regular. If you really want it STAT, you have to order it SUPRER STAT. It's like inflation.

Ed

 

[roja]

Whoa, there's a lot of whining about nursing staff here! Be careful...I know here it's just venting, but it's not a cool way to generalize. Nurses/techs/etc do a lot of running around that you've never had to even think about, and there are things that all docs do that make their lives more difficult without us even knowing it.

So, everyone think a warm fuzzy about that nurse/tech/etc that has or will prevent you from looking like a fool one day...and remember that the good goes with the bad for all of us, and that we all work hard.

Not sure one comment means 'alot of whining'.

And there are no warm fuzzies for our labs. However, our nurses, kick butt.

 

[VentdependenT]

Stat means you get on the phone and start calling the people you need to get $hit done. Don't leave it up to the secretary. Those trops you ordered stat will be done an hour from when your ink hit the paper.

 

[Winged Scapula]

In my hospital, that IS what it means.

We've tried to get the "Physician's Orders" sheets changed to read "Physician's Suggestions."

LOL. I've often suggested the latter here as well!

In truth, a lot of the blame goes to the resident/physician themselves. Our charts have a color coded system for orders and on the surgical floors, they are to be taken to the nurse's station to be taken off. However, I cannot count the number to times I've seen residents:

a) not "flag" the chart with the color for an order
b) not take the chart to the nurse's station but rather leave it at the bedside
c) not sign their order
d) write an illegible order
e) not tell someone (ie, the nurse taking care of the patient, calling radiology themselves, calling the respiratory therapist themselves, etc.) that a stat order exists. As Ventdependent so notes, the best way to get things done in the fastest fashion is to take things into your own hands, and communicate your desires/suggestions/orders to those who need them done. In addition, doing it nicely will often (especially with the nurses, allied health and radiology residents) get it done quicker.

 

[Boomer]

LOL. I've often suggested the latter here as well!

In truth, a lot of the blame goes to the resident/physician themselves. Our charts have a color coded system for orders and on the surgical floors, they are to be taken to the nurse's station to be taken off. However, I cannot count the number to times I've seen residents:

a) not "flag" the chart with the color for an order
b) not take the chart to the nurse's station but rather leave it at the bedside
c) not sign their order
d) write an illegible order
e) not tell someone (ie, the nurse taking care of the patient, calling radiology themselves, calling the respiratory therapist themselves, etc.) that a stat order exists. As Ventdependent so notes, the best way to get things done in the fastest fashion is to take things into your own hands, and communicate your desires/suggestions/orders to those who need them done. In addition, doing it nicely will often (especially with the nurses, allied health and radiology residents) get it done quicker.

I don't know, but I've gotten reamed 3 times in the past week because orders I had written hadn't been done.The kicker of it all was, they had all been noted/signed off by a nurse.....just not performed....I guess next time I need to run down to lab, get a phlebotomy cart, go draw the blood myself, take it to lab, and run the analyzers myself....

 

[roja]

This is why computerized systems are the best. We use EMSTAT. When I order it, it goes red in teh 'nursing' segment (we can all see it). They click off when they send it to the lab (lab column goes yellow), lab inputs wierd thing when they recieve specimen, column goes green when orders are done and in computer.

Everything tracked to the minute. Its' great.

 

[Febrifuge]

We also have EMSTAT. It rules. As a tech, I can see that a patient is supposed to go to Xray, but also needs drugs and is being seen by yet another merry band of docs... so I can ask the nurse "say, did you get a chance to put in that line yet?" and I can raise my eyebrows in that special way that gently tells the 8 pairs of Resident-green scrubs in the patient's room that they need to wrap up the oratory portion of the program soon, if they want something to discuss at the big conference they'll inevitably have next hour.

It's like we're all psychic. As a result, people get pain control before they get their limbs manipulated, and patients tend not to sit around waiting for someone to notice they're ready for whatever needs to be done.

I totally need to do a rotation at your hospital, Roja, soon's I git me some edumacation.

 

[roja]

Indeed. We love med students and there are never enough. I love emstat.

 

[TysonCook]

One of our upperclassmen did some looking up last year and from what I've heard PIMP is from being "Put In My Place" that has stuck around since the old days.

 

[phoenixsupra]

Aggreed, the JAMA article sounds like just a humorous bs story. When I took German I remember it was a real effort for anyone to pronounce anything approximating an "umlaut" vowel. Let alone spontaneously imitating them. I had an attending who remembers the 'put in my place' acronym being fairly common knowledge when he was training (a long time ago).

 

[Febrifuge]

Actually, no, that's just a fun fake mnemonic. Kind of like how "Ford" stands for "Found On Road Dead," or Edina (wealthy suburb of Minneapolis) stands for "Every Day, I Need Attention."

The real scoop is in the JAMA article Pikachu noted... it's got references and everything... the Germanic "puemp" got Anglicized, is all...

<<
The earliest reference to pimping is attributed to Harvey in London in 1628. He laments his students? lack of enthusiasm for learning the circulation of the blood: ?They know nothing of Natural Philosophy, these pin-heads. Drunkards, sloths, their bellies filled with Mead and Ale. O that I might see them pimped!?

In 1889, Koch recorded a series of ?Puempfrage? or ?pimp questions? he would later use on his rounds in Heidelberg. Unpublished notes made by Abraham Flexner on his visit to Johns Hopkins in 1916 yield the first American reference: ?Rounded with Osler today. Riddles house officers with questions. Like a Gatling gun. Welch says students call it ?pimping.? Delightful.?

The Art of Pimping
by Frederick L. Brancati, MD, Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh.
From JAMA 262(1):89, July 7, 1989.
>>

I think that's all my Cliff Clavin points for the week, though, so I'm done.

 

[phoenixsupra]

Sorry, not buying it. Makes sense that Johns Hopkins types would dress up a common idiom as something less common. Maybe the damn germans coppied the anglo term and converted it to the more gothic "puempfrage". Smoke on that one for a while. Ha ha

 

[Febrifuge]

The part that bugs me is, I can't find a dictionary that acknowledges this weird little medical term. Maybe someday when I'm bored and I've already put up that new shelf in the bathroom, I'll dig for references in the JAMA article.

When I first heard about "pimping," I was mystified. I heard it from my gf at the time, an MS-III, and I assumed it had something to do with faculty making their own little brood of students and residents smarter and thus more "attractive" than the kids under the other attendings. As in, being a good pimp means smackin' your own hoes, but it also means making your street corner the best one.

But no, she said. It's about being ground down to paste with hard questions. She had no good reason it would be called "pimping" rather than something else. And I guess that's just how it works sometimes. Kind of like how we say "visualize" when we mean "see," and if we need a word for "imagine what the such-and-such looks like," we have to use something else to avoid confusion.

 

[phoenixsupra]

Interesting. That's why I looked into it in the first place too. I really think that it's more likely that the germans would take pimp and turn it into Puemp than the other way round. We take german words if they sound right. There's no way we'd borrow Puemp and keep the sound. It just doesn't sound right. More likely if that was how it happened we'd just call them pump questions.
Furthermore, pimping definately does put you in you place. And it's used to do exactly this. Also, pimp used to be a fairly common idiom in general use for putting someone in their place. I think it fell out of use as reference to social class became sort of taboo. Reall, medicine loves acronyms. CYA, POS, PPP etc etc etc. Put in my place seems to fit right in.

 

[Winged Scapula]

I don't know, but I've gotten reamed 3 times in the past week because orders I had written hadn't been done.The kicker of it all was, they had all been noted/signed off by a nurse.....just not performed....I guess next time I need to run down to lab, get a phlebotomy cart, go draw the blood myself, take it to lab, and run the analyzers myself....

I don't deny that this happens and often. I just wanted to point out (before we got into a thread bashing allied health personnel) that the PHYSICIANS themselves are also often to blame and that sometimes a little attention to detail and communication can help solve the problem. But do orders get taken off and not done? ABSO-FRICKIN'-LUTELY!

As for drawing the blood yourself - if it needs done stat and no one else can do it for you, heck yeah do it yourself. I have many a time when I felt it served the patient's interest because I could do it faster than having the order taken off, sent to the lab, etc.

 

[Febrifuge]

I am a tech, and I approve KC's message.