When I was a resident, sign outs (signing over the patients in the ER to the next doc) tended to be quite long. As an upper year resident, you were essentially “running” half the ER at any one time so sign out tended to involve anywhere from 10-25 patients and could last a half an hour. Thus we tried to be a fast and efficient as possible. This was often hampered by the accent of one of my fellow residents. He was Russian and although had lived in this country for 15 years, still had a very heavy accent. He tended to slur his words (even though he was not drinking!) so whomever was coming on duty to get sign out from him was always craning one’s ear to understand him. Frequently he would present a case and we would have to go over it again to make sure we got it right.
One particularly funny episode occurred when he was telling me about a particular patient who had received blunt trauma to the head and was awaiting a CT scan. He said “Theese man got heet weeth a pen.” “What?” I said, observing that the man had a huge bruise on his forehead and looked to be in significant pain, “that must have been one huge pen!” “Nooooooo!” he said,”not a writing pen!”, he said holding up his ballpoint pen, “a FRYEENG PEN!”
Ohhh! Now THAT makes more sense!
When living in West Virginia, I once asked for a pen. The response:
“You want an ink pin or a stick pin?”