Katie in East Thetford, Vermont, shares NICU slang from a neonatal intensive care unit, where a doorbell is an alarm summoning a team and a Giraffe is a brand-name bed that controls heat and humidity for an infant. The PANDA Room is the Preterm and Newborn Diagnostic Area, where babies are assessed and stabilized before a likely NICU admission. It replaced Resuscitation Room after a parent pointed out how frightening that name sounded. Other terms in a shift report include surf, giving surfactant through a breathing tube, A’s and B’s for apnea and bradycardia, and moving a stable grower feeder baby to the carpet, a short but meaningful step toward going home. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Neonatal Unit Jargon: “Doorbell,” “Giraffe,” and “PANDA Room””
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
We asked you to send us your workplace jargon, and boy, did we get a boatload from Katie Driscoll. She’s from East Thetford, Vermont, and she works in a NICU, that is a neonatal intensive care unit.
And I’m just going to read it because it’s practically poetry. Term primip in BP19 that might be a doorbell. The strip was concerning, so the room’s set up. We have a team in the panda room ready for the 26-weeker. She wasn’t pre-treated, so expecting to surf, then extubate to Nipvi. The giraffe is warmed up and ready. Jones is a grower feeder now, so she got moved to the carpet. She’s still having A’s and B’s. And the Smiths did well in the koala, so should head home today.
Did you get any of that, Grant?
We’ve talked about Primip on the show before, but the rest of it, I could make some guesses. But why don’t you explain the whole thing to me?
Okay. Well, a primip is a woman who’s experiencing her first delivery, as we discussed. BP-19 is a room on the birthing pavilion.
Okay.
They have different numbers. The doorbell is the alarm that the birthing unit sounds if they need a whole team to tend to the infant all at once. And the strip is the recording monitor of the infant during the mother’s labor.
So term primip in BP-19, it might be a doorbell. The strip was concerning, so the room’s set up.
Gotcha.
The PANDAROOM, I love that.
Yeah, that’s nice.
The PANDAROOM is the preterm and newborn diagnostic area. It’s an acronym.
Right.
And it’s the place where you assess and stabilize an infant that more than likely will need to be admitted to the NICU. Katie says, we used to call it the resuscitation room until a parent pointed out how scary it sounded.
And the giraffe is a bed that maintains a specific heat and humidity for the infant, and that is a brand name, giraffe. And that shift report also included the expression surfing and extubating to NIPV. That means placing a breathing tube, instilling a surfactant into the lungs. That’s a substance that helps the lungs work better. And then removing the breathing tube. NIPV is non-invasive positive pressure ventilation.
And then later on, she’s talking about Jones is a grower feeder now, so she got moved to the carpet. That means that it’s a baby that still needs close monitoring but is considered stable, and they may still have A’s and B’s, which is apnea and bradycardia. We know apnea, difficulty breathing, and bradycardia is a slow heartbeat.
And I thought this part about the carpet was really interesting, moving to the carpet, because the more unstable infants are cared for in a room with a tile floor, and when they become more stable and need less equipment, they’re moved to another area that has carpeting.
And Katie writes, it was parents who first referred to being moved to the carpet as a big positive change or graduation. The move is physically less than 50 feet away, but it’s such an important move for the parents.
I love that, moving to the carpet.
Oh, this is so fascinating.
All of this.
I think part of the appeal is that they’re trying to use language that’s not going to alarm parents. But they’re still doing their jobs, and they’re doing the job of shortening these long ideas.
Yes.
They can’t express these ideas fully, so they have to shorten things.
Right, which one does with jargon.
And finally, the Smiths did well in the koala and should head home today. Another sweet fuzzy word, the koala, it’s a slang term that’s specific to that hospital because it’s a room next to the unit that was set up with funds from the Quechee Lakes Landowners Association, or QLLA, which sounds like koala if you say it fast.
I love giraffes and pandas and koalas.
I know, right there.
Oh, that’s nice.
You’ve got to feel a little bit better. They’ve done what they can to soften it and to reduce the overall impact of the scariness and the sterility of the jargon.
And yet you still get a feeling of the, I guess, the expertise behind the jargon, right? The learnedness that’s back there.
Right.
These competent people all coming together for this common effort of helping these kids turn into fat-bouncing babies.
Right.
And the utility of it. It just lets you communicate really quickly.
Right.
Bam, bam, bam. Lots of stuff is moving really fast. Wonderful thing.
And I know that there are lots of jobs out there that have a language just like that.
We’d love to hear your story. What’s a few minutes like in your job? What’s the jargon like?
We’d like to tell your story, 877-929-9673, or send that email to words@waywordradio.org.
