it became legal last year   See 11 other replies

I worked in a busy emergency department for 15 years, and we would have just said
"I'll take your gun shot for you"   See 8 other replies

Yeah, that "Grinch" scene did things to me inside...He's definitely hot.   See 4 other replies

Wow, you guys are really breaking this down...so I will in my own way. I'm a paramedic and I hear and say dispatchers, emts, nurses, doctors, and police say "gun shot wound." As paramedics, we have to do our own documentation, so i am familiar with the abbreviations that are used for writing patient care reports. And I would consider GSW to be a written abbreviation, not a spoken one. Writing GSW is A LOT shorter than writing gun shot wound. If we started speaking in terms of all the abbreviations we write it would sound corny. We don't say ABD for abdomen, or NTG for nitroglycerin(we say nitro for short), or ASA for asprin. But we do say some like ABC's, CPR, EKG, and PEARL because they are VERY long words. RSI instead of Rapid sequence intubation. There would be some abbreviations that would be shorter to say, like CO for carbon monoxide and SL for sublingual, but we don't say them and we wouldn't need to say them often anyway. "Doctor I gave the pee tee (pt) en tee gee(NTG) ess el (SL) like you said!" On the other hand, we say BVM and it has the same amount of syllables as bag valve mask, but we dont say NKDA for no known drug allergies, which also has the same. I think cuz that sounds weird and its usually something that only needs to be documented. All in all I think we say abbreviations for words that are shorter to say and are used often. And that don't sound weird, but that is just an opinion. Maybe someone else is used to hearing GSW so it sounds normal to them. But it sounds corny to me.The only other abbreviations I could find that are longer spoken also have W's - WPW for wolff parkinsons white, and PWD for pink, warm, and dry BECAUSE they are for writing reports. It is shorter to WRITE them. When your done saying GSW, even with dub yoo, it is still 4 syllables and gun shot wound is 3. When we give radio reports we say gun shot wound...hopefully not too often. So in my opinion, GSW sounds weird!   See 8 other replies

Well explained. I know it's of little importance, just something that for one reason or another I picked up on and was curious about.   See 8 other replies

Yes, thank you for the trip of the tongue Mr. Nabokov.   See 8 other replies