Alphabetic Soup

Professionals develop a lingo or common language with which to talk to each other and code language so practitioners remember and follow protocol. Medical signals can mean life or death. Hospital emergency wards (EW) can be a hotbed of anxious and frenetic activity so it is essential to resolve critical issues. The Director of Trauma Surgery at Galen was Jack Parker. He cautioned medical students at morning lectures to remember their "ABC's." Doctors have little time to analyze patients wheeled in by emergency medical technicians (EMT) who have already done cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in the field. "First-hour physicians" must first check breathing and bleeding, which means "Airway, Breathing, and Circulation" (ABC). Patients have moments to live with blocked airway or not breathing and minutes for blood to drain from circulation. Last immediate things but not life-threatening are "Disability, Expose" (DE) meaning consciousness and remove all clothes to...