>BTW - do they really say "Stat" in real-life op. theatres

It is very common in emergency rooms to hear a physician give a verbal order for medication and follow it up with stat. In this case the meaning is to give it now, not t.i.d., b.i.d., q.i.d, or at some other interval, because the convention is for those medications to be delivered at a set time of day. The three *.i.d.'s are acronyms for Latin expressions, I will probably misspell them, but here goes: Ter in Die (three times in a day) Bis in Die (twice a day) and Quater in Die (four times a day.) In the hospital setting if a nurse has an order for b.i.d/, he gives the medication once in AM and once in PM. The hospital will actually have a rule as to what the times of day are. Most common is to use 8 AM as the starting time, b.i.d. would be 8 AM and 8 PM, q.i.d. would be 8 AM, 12 noon, 4 PM and 8 PM. There are exceptions where a medication has to be delivered at more even times around the clock and I believe the convention was to have the physician write down the actual times for administration of the dosage. If a physician wanted an immediate dosage followed by regular administration she would say administer 1000 units of penn-V stat then b.i.d. until this guy's rash clears up.

There's also a term for once a day but I've forgotten it.

And different hospitals have different protocols for using stat. as an "order". I remember quite clearly the neurosurgeon who was summoned to the ER at Parkland to attend to JFK later wrote that he first learned of the emergency when he was walking up a flight of stairs and heard a page for Doctor X to report to the ER "stat."

Many years ago I worked as an orderly in an emergency room, and I cannot tell you that I ever heard the word stat used other than as an order for medication. Certainly there were never scenes such as those on television where people go running and banging doors and shoving people out of the way and screaming at the tops of their lungs. It was a lesson I learned very early in life (I began working in the ER when I was 16 or so.) When an emergency occurs, the very worst thing one can do is to hurry, because that can result in a mistake or further injury, even to oneself.

I recently watched an accident scene near my house, and had to explain to a neighbor that the EMT didn't run because it didn't help. In addition to working in the ER, I was also a volunteer rescue squad member for 11 years. To give perspective, one year I had over a thousand "ambulance runs". In those 11 years I never once witnessed or even heard of a situation or incident in which a few seconds made a difference. A few minutes, definitely, but seconds simply don't count, and if I fall and break a leg while running to get to a victim, how have I helped him or her?

stat enough????


TEd