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| The Jargon Buster - words you may, or may not, hear in the Cardiac Bays and Wards
Initials and Acronyms (words formed from the initial letters of other words)
A - A&E: Accident and Emergency
- ALS: Advanced Life Support
- AMI: Acute Myocardial Infarction (heart attack)
- AVR: Aortic Valve Replacement
B
- BACR: British Association of Cardiac Rehabilitation
- BCS: British Cardiac Society
- BHF: British Heart Foundation
C
- CABG: Coronary Artery Bypass Graft
- CCAD: Central Cardiac Audit Database
- CHD: Coronary Heart Disease/Congenital heart defects.
- CPR: Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation
- CSSD: Central Sterile Supplies Department
- CVD: Cardio Vascular Disease
- CVS: Cardio Vascular System
D
- DGH: District General Hospital
E limbs. An exercise (stress) ECG is taken before and during exercise (usually using a treadmill or stationary bicycle) to obtain objective and quantitative recording of myocardial ischaemia on exertion.
- EHR: Electronic Health Records: Longitudinal records of patients’ health and healthcare throughout life.
- ENT: Ear, Nose and Throat
- EPR: Electronic Patient Records: Records containing patients’ personal details (name, date of birth, etc), their diagnosis of
condition, and details about the treatment/assessments undertaken, clinician etc. Typically covers the episodic care provided mainly by one institution.
G
- GP: General Practitioner: A doctor who, often with colleagues in partnership, works from a local surgery providing medical advice
and treatment to patients who are registered with them, usually supported by practice nurses. GPs are not usually employed by the NHS, but provide services to patients through a contract with the Health Service.
H
- HDL: High Density Lipoprotein: A complex of fat and protein that may serve to remove cholesterol from the tissues. Sometimes
described as a “good” form of cholesterol. I
- ICD: Implantable Cardiac Defibrillator
L
- LDL: Low Density Lipoprotein: A complex of fat and protein which is associated with an increased risk of coronary disease.
- LIG: Local Implementation Groups
- LIO: Local Implementation Officer
- LIP: Local Implementation Plan
- LIS: Local Implementation Strategy
- LIT: Local Implementation Team
- LVD: Left Ventricular Dysfunction: Disordered pumping action of the main chamber of the heart.
M
- MI: Myocardial Infarction (Heart Attack)
- MPC: Medical Practitioners’ Committee
- MRC: Medical Research Council
- MRSA: Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus: This is difficult to treat and some strains are resistant to antibiotics. Therefore
there is concern over it in hospitals and patients with it may be isolated to prevent spread to others.
- MSLC: Maternity Services Liaison Committee
- MVR: Mitral Valve Replacement
N - NAG: Needs Assessment Group
- NAS: Needs Assessment Schedule
- NBA: National Blood Authority
- NHS: National Health Service
- NPCDT: National Primary Care Development Team
O - OAT: Out-of-Area Treatment: Services purchased for individual patients not covered by Service Agreements with purchasers.
Previously known as Extra Contractual referrals.
PHLS: Public Health Laboratory Service: This protects the population from infection by detecting, diagnosing, and monitoring
communicable diseases. Contains some information on infectious illnesses such as E.coli, meningitis and malaria.
- PICU: Paediatric Intensive Care Unit: Units providing care and treatment for children who are seriously or critically ill and require
round-the-clock care by specialist clinical staff.
- PTCA: Percutaneous Transluminal Coronary Angioplasty (expansion of a narrowed blood vessel with a balloon)
- PTS: Patient Transport Services
R - RACPC: Rapid Access Chest Pain
Meanings of Terminology within the NHS
A
- Acute: Services at general hospitals which treat patients for a certain condition for a short time.
- Acute Coronary Events: Heart Attacks
- Acute Hospitals: Hospitals providing urgent or planned treatments or operations and out-patient appointments.
- Advocacy: When an advocate (such as a pharmacist, doctor, voluntary worker, or carer) acts on behalf of a patient or carer.
- Aetiology: The cause of a disease
- Age Standardised Mortality Rates: Death rates to take into account the age profile of the population, which change overtime.
- Ambulatory Care Centre: A centre with services designed around patients’ needs where they can be admitted and discharged within a day, including out-patients, x-ray, day surgery and medical diagnostic services.
- Angina, angina pectoris: Literally, pain in the chest. Usually gripping or crushing in nature in the chest and/or left arm and jaw felt when there is insufficient blood supply to the heart muscle. Stable Angina: is the term used for angina which is relatively predictable and the intensity and frequency of which remains similar over long periods. Unstable Angina: is severe and unpredictable and which threatens to progress to an acute myocardial infarction (heart attack)
- Angiogram: A procedure in which a fine catheter is inserted via a blood vessel to inject x-ray opaque dye into the coronary arteries to obtain an x-ray image of the anatomy of the coronary arteries.
- Angioplasty: A procedure in which a small balloon on the end of a catheter is inserted into an artery (in CHD, the coronary arteries) and inflated to widen a narrowed artery.
- Anti-emetic: A drug administered to relieve nausea and vomiting.
- Anti-thrombotics: Drugs administered to reduce blood clotting, e.g. aspirin, heparin
- Arrhythmia: An abnormal rhythm of the heart
- Artery: A blood vessel that carries blood away from the heart.
- Atheroma: Deposits of fatty material and cholesterol inside the walls of arteries.
- Atherosclerosis: Narrowing and thickening of arteries due to the development of fibrous tissue in the wall and sometimes calcium deposits. Usually associated with atheroma.
- Atrial fibrillation: Irregular electrical activity in the atria (the receiving chambers of the heart) leading to irregular contraction of the heart muscle.
B
- Beta-blocker: A class of drugs used to treat raised blood pressure and slow the heart rate.
- Bilateral: Of both sides, for e.g. nasal bilateral obstruction means obstruction of both sides.
- Bradycardia: A heart rate of 50 beats per minute or lower.
C
Cardiology: Study of the heart
- Cardiac arrest: Complete cessation of the heart beat.
- Cardio-pulmonary resuscitation: The techniques for treating cardiac arrest by artificial respiration and cardiac compression.
- Cardiothoracic: Of the heart and chest contents, e.g. oesophagus and lungs
- Cardioversion: The application of electric shock or drugs to attempt restoration of a normal heart rhythm in a patient with cardiac arrhythmia.
- Cardiac Catheter: A long, narrow tube which, when passed through the veins or arteries into the heart cavities, is used for measuring pressures or injecting x-ray opaque dye for outlining the heart and blood vessels.
- Care in the Community: Policy whereby patients with continuing medical and social care needs are cared for in a community or domestic, rather than institutional setting. It is part of a government agenda to give patients the right of choice.
- Carotid Endarterectomy: Surgical procedure to reduce thickening in the ceratoid artery.
- Chronic Disease: long-term illness or condition.
- Circulatory Disease: Any disease affecting the heart or blood vessels.
- Clinical: Of or for the treatment of patients.
- Clinical Indicators: Statistics used to assess clinical care that may raise issues for further investigation.
- Clinical Intervention: Any examination, procedure or therapy used to benefit patients.
- Clinician: Someone who is medically trained to deal with patients, including doctors, dentists, nurses, midwives, health visitors, pharmacist, opticians, orthoptists, chiropodists, radiographers, physiotheropists, dieticians, occupational therapists, medical laboratory scientific officers, orthotists and prosthetists, speech and language therapists, and all other healthcare professionals.
- Community Nurses: Includes practice nurses, district nurses, health visitors and school nurses.
- Continuing Care: Health care provided over a long period of time for those with long-term needs.
- Consultant: a senior doctor who specialises in a particular area of medicine.
D
- Day Case: A surgical procedure not requiring over night hospital stay.
- Designated Doctor: A community paediatrician with expertise in child protection appointed by the health authority to sit on the ACPC to advise and co-ordinate child protection matters across agencies.
- Designated Nurse: A community nurse with expertise in child protection appointed by the health authority to sit on the ACPC, to advise and co-ordinate nursing input, relating to child protection.
- Diana Community Nurses Team: A team of nurses, therapists and others providing care at home for children with life-threatening illnesses. Funded by the Diana Memorial Fund.
- Direct Access: Where GP’s can make use of hospital based facilities, such as x-rays, physiotherapy, without reference.
- Disability Registers: A register of all the people with a significant disability.
E - Echocardiogram: An image and measurement of the heart obtained using ultrasound.
- Effectiveness: The extent to which a treatment, procedure or service works.
- Elective: Planned care and treatment.
- Eligibility Criteria: The requirements a person needs to meet to receive treatment/service.
- Embolism: The migration through the bloodstream of a blood clot from one part of the body to another where is causes an blockage
- Emergency Activity: Difficulties faced by the NHS Trusts in accommodating increasing numbers of patients requiring emergency hospital admission.
- Epidemiology: The study of diseases in the population.
- Evidenced-Based Practice/Medicine: Concerns the development of clinical practice guidelines, which are based on a thorough review of all available research.
F
- Formulary: A directory providing information on drugs available for treating illness and disease.
G
H - Health Gain: The improvement in the populations’ health status. Health Improvement Programme: An action programme to improve health and healthcare locally, led by the Health Authority. It will involve NHS Trusts, Primary Care Groups and other primary care professionals, working in partnership with the local authority and engaging in other local interests.
- Health Inequalities: Poorer health experience is referred to as ‘health inequalities’. They are a shared problem for people in local government and the NHS. They arise because some people are more likely to become ill and /or less likely to have access to health services. They exist between different age groups, genders, ethnic groups, social classes etc. The Aim is for everyone to have the opportunity to attain high levels of health and not to be disadvantaged.
- Heart Failure: A condition in which the pumping action of the heart is inadequate. It can result in the accumulation of fluid in the body and/or congestion of the lungs.
- Hepatitis B: A virus causing infection of and damage to the liver, which is potentially infectious to others.
- Homeopathy: An alternative form of medicine, where tiny doses of relevant drugs and substances, often derived from natural sources, such as herbal medicines, are used to improve health.
- Hospital Consultants: Take full responsibility for the clinical care of patients and staff, for overseeing work and making sure staff do not take on responsibilities beyond their ability.
- Hypertension: raised blood pressure.
I - Incidence: The number of people who get a particular disease or suffer a particular injury or disability.
- In-patient Care: Care which involves a stay in hospital for at least one night.
- Intermediate Care: Care which is provided as an alternative to general hospital admission for treatment. Also provided to allow patients to be safely discharged from hospital and complete recovery at home or elsewhere.
- Ischaemic (heart disease): Lacking in blood supply.
J
- Junior Doctors: They do their final year training in hospitals, starting as house officers, becoming senior house officers, then specialist registrars. During this time they become more specialist and qualified until being appointed senior consultant posts. GPs and public health doctors move from this career path after completing their senior house officer training to do further training in their chosen speciality.
M - Medical Admissions Unit: A ward that takes referrals either directly from GPs or from within the hospital’s emergency services. This provides a short stay designed to allow staff to conduct a full assessment of the patient’s condition.
- Morbidity: Illness or disability.
N
- National Service Frameworks: Evidence-based standards setting out what patients can expect to receive from the NHS in major care areas or disease groups.
- Needs Assessment: Early and essential stage in the development of the HIMP aimed at assessing the health needs of the community.
- Neonatal Care: The care of new-born infants under 28 days old.
- NHS Direct: This is a 24-hour nurse-led helpline providing confidential healthcare advice and information. 0845 46 67.
- NHS Number: A unique number that identifies a patient. Everyone has been allocated a number.
O
- Obstruction Sleep Apnoea: A condition where the sufferer will temporarily stop breathing when asleep.
- Outcomes: The result of health interventions or treatment.
- Outcome Indicators: Measurements of the success of clinical treatment/intervention in terms of the impact on the health of the individual.
- Out-patient: Care given in hospital without requiring an overnight stay.
P - Paediatrics: The medicine of children.
- Palliative Care: Care of the dying or of people with a disease for which there is no cure. Palliative care neither hastens or postpones death. It pays equal attention to the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of care of patients and those close to them.
- Partner Agencies: Organisations the NHS work closely with including social services, district and county councils and voluntary agencies.
- Patients’ Forum: There is one in every trust, bringing the patients’ perspective into management decision-making.
- Predisposing Factor: Factor(s), which if present, increase the risk of disease.
- Primary Care: Care provided by GPs, and the team who work with them in their surgeries and health centres, and by dentists, pharmacists and opticians. The team most closely linked with the work of the GP includes health visitors, midwives, district nurses, and mental health nurses, employed by a community NHS Trust.
- Practice nurses are employed by GPs.
- Primary Care Records: An electronic record to replace the lifelong paper record kept by GPs for each patient, which may be used by other authorised members of the primary health care team.
- Primary Health Care Team: A team of health professionals who work in the community. They include GPs, child and family nurses, district nurses, pharmacists, dentists, chiropodists etc.
- Prognosis: The likely outcome of an illness.
- Protocol or Clinical Guidelines: This refers to clinical policies that guide doctors and others about the best treatment and management of certain conditions, including medication. The guidelines are research-based but also developed to suit local application given the range of services. Increasingly, clinical guidelines or protocols are developed nationally and adapted for local use.
- Providers: Hospital trusts, GPs, voluntary organisations and sometimes private institutions that provide health care according to contract, and then adapted for local use.
- Public Care: The Care of the Local Authority; this includes children in foster care, residential homes, detained or with their parents under a care order. Children in public care are also referred to as ‘looked after’.
- Public Health: ‘The science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organised efforts of society'(Acheson, 1988).
Q
- Q-wave infarcts: An ECG manifestation of myocardial infarction where “q” waves are present.
R
- Refractory angina: Angina that persists anti-ischaemic medication and/or revascularisation.
- Rehabilitation: Care designed to improve the functioning of patients who have suffered from or who continue to suffer from physical or mental disorders.
- Renal: Relating to the kidneys.
- Resource: Money, people, time or beds.
- Revascularisation: The restoration of blood supply.
- Risk Management: An assessment of the degree of risk an individual poses to herself/himself or others.
S - Secondary Prevention: In the case of CHD, interventions such as lifestyle changes or drugs aimed at slowing or reversing the progression of disease.
- Secondary Care: Healthcare provided in hospital.
- Specialist Placements: Places for children with severe disabilities who cannot be provided with adequate services at home. These are usually in specialist schools and units, often outside the county, providing support, nursing care and provisions, round-the-clock.
- Specialist Registrar: A Junior Doctor; not a consultant.
- Statins: A class of drugs used to treat raised blood cholesterol and reduce the risk of CHD.
- Statutory Agencies: Government agencies which include the NHS and local authorities and the trusts of departments that make them up, e.g. Health Authority, PCG/T, Hospital Trust. Social Services, Local Education Authority, etc.
- Stent: An artificial structure inserted into a coronary artery following PTCA to support the vessel wall and reduce the risk of re-occlusion.
- Summary Personal Health Record: A short version of the primary care record containing information critical to the professions involved in caring for a patient.
- Sure Start: A government initiative aimed at children aged under four and their families to give them the best possible start in life. Sure Start is targeted at deprived areas and provides a wide range of services and support for families and tries to involve them as key partners in the process.
T - Tachycardia: A heart rate of 100 beats per minute or greater
- Thoracic: Relating to the chest.
- Thrombolysis: The process of using drugs to dissolve clots in blood vessels.
- Thrombosis: The process of clot formation (thrombus – clot)
- Trauma: Injury; emotional shock.
- Troponin T: A protein released by injured heart muscle. Increasingly used to estimate risk of complications in people with heart attack or unstable angina.
- Trusts: Semi-independent bodies within the NHS, governed by a board, which provide or commission health services.
U - Unified Allocation: This consists of the general allocation which funds hospital and community health services, management costs and other costs, the GMS cash limited allocation and the GP prescribing allocation.
- Universal Leucodepletion: A type of blood product, which involves the removal of white blood cells.
V - Vascular (disease): Affecting the blood vessels.
- Ventricles: The two main pumping chambers of the heart.
- Ventricular Fibrillation: Rapid and chaotic beating of the ventricles caused by irregular electrical activity. The most common cause of cardiac arrest and death associated with myocardial infarction (heart attack)
W - Waiting Time: The time which elapses between the request by a GP for an appointment and the attendance of the patient at the out-patient department; or the date a patient’s name is put on an in-patient list and the date of admission. It does not include the time people are suspended from the list or time lost by people being put back on the list after deletion. The NHS Plan commits the health services, by 2005, to working within maximum waiting times of 3 months for a routine out-patient appointment and six months for in-patient treatment.
- Warfarin: A drug used to thin the blood
- Welfare to Work for Disabled People (JIP): A joint initiative from the Department of Health, Department of Education and Employment and Department of Social Security to improve opportunities and incentives for all disabled people of working age who want to work or stay in work.
- White Paper: A Government document that outlines the way policy and services will operate in the future.
- Wider Public Health: A broad view of the health of a population which includes the impacts of social and environmental factors.
- Winter Pressures: Peaks in demands across all emergency services resulting from the effects of winter, such as bad weather and flu epidemics.
Buzzwords and gobbledegook (talking turkey)
- Blue sky thinking: Approaching a problem or issue as though we lived in an ideal world and anything was possible. (For example: ‘if we had unlimited money, what would we do to improve services?’).
- Capacity building: Working with local organisations and individuals to maximise their potential by increasing their skills and effectiveness. Empowering community members.
- Around (as in ‘to work around’, ‘issues around’): On, to do with.
- To get into bed with: To work closely with.
- To get your ducks in a row: To get ready, prepare.
- Fit for purpose: Suitable
- To have the ball: To be in control.
- To helicopter up: To take an overview, to see the broader context.
- To park something (as in ‘let’s park that idea’): To leave something for now, put something on one side.
- To pick the low-hanging fruit: To start with the easiest things.
- Cherry pick (e.g. ‘let’s cherry pick the survey results’): Only use the good or best parts of something and ignore the rest.
- To reality-check something: To see if something is correct/feasible.
- To row back on (a commitment): To go back on.
- To touch base with: To contact, update
- As of the date of: From, since
- To have the capability to: To be able to
- Negative health outcome: Illness or death
- Per capita: Per person, per head, each
- To promulgate: To make public, spread the word about
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