Don't call your patient a C.O.W.

In our rush towards electronic medical record keeping, perhaps we haven't fully examined all the possible consequences. At our surgery center the patient's history is entered in preop holding on a computer workstation that is placed on a rolling cart. When the patient is taken to the operating room, this Computer On Wheels follows the patient in, thereby ensuring continuity of the patient's records.

One day as a rather portly patient was brought into the operating room, the circulating nurse yelled, "Bring in the C.O.W.!" I guess the patient took offense to that remark. She remembered enough about that incident to write an angry letter to the hospital administrator complaining about the staff's lack of courtesy calling her a cow. Now we never mention the word cow in the O.R.