Timeline for What do you call a building, or rooms within it, where doctors see their patients?
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14 events
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| May 12, 2016 at 15:23 | comment | added | user126158 | Partly the confusion could stem from the fact that dentists actually do cut in to the body in their offices, and veterinarians may well do that also but General Practitioners might never cut in to any bodies except for extremely minor procedures such as biopsies (performed with a simple instrument, not a deep invasion of the body, which would require much more preparation and equipment). The folks who actually perform surgery are properly called Surgeons, and they are highly trained and specialized. You could go your whole life without ever consulting one. Can particular terms stay specific? | |
| Jun 16, 2015 at 12:13 | comment | added | WS2 | @NateEldredge And all that would be the case in Britain too. Being in surgery means undergoing an operation. But used with an article surgery can and mostly does refer either to the building from which a group of doctors practice, or to an open session - morning surgery starts at 8.00am. As Jessa points out in her answer it is meaning 3 in Merriam Webster. | |
| Jun 16, 2015 at 6:29 | comment | added | Nate Eldredge | @Marthaª: Interesting. I'm a native AmE speaker, and I never thought of surgery as referring to the operating room. To me it's the act of operating on a patient, and never refers to a physical place. When you say the patient is in surgery, I don't understand that as giving her location, but just to mean that she is undergoing a medical operation. I guess I see in surgery as being analogous to in pain or in labor; it describes a person's state of being, not their location. | |
| Jun 15, 2015 at 23:28 | vote | accept | WS2 | ||
| Jun 15, 2015 at 20:27 | comment | added | Marthaª | Just to agree: surgery is either the OR, or the activity performed in it. Either way, scalpels will be involved. You visit the doctor at her office (if she's the only MD there) or her clinic (if multiple doctors share the space). The actual room with the exam table, scale, etc. is called the exam room or examination room. IME, medical center is a hospital plus all the medical facilities that have grown up around it. Health center is either the free clinic on a college campus, or it's an "alternative medicine" facility. | |
| Jun 15, 2015 at 19:52 | comment | added | WS2 | @PeterShor we also use the term group practice. But this is a new arrival on the health scene here. It is more than a doctor's practice but less than a hospital. This one was built because it is ten miles from the nearest hospital and Accident & Emergency Unit. | |
| Jun 15, 2015 at 19:47 | comment | added | Jessa | In Northern California at least, health center isn't a common term. I doubt I've ever heard it used here. Clinic would be more typical. Medical center is sometimes used for large, non-hospital medical facilities. | |
| Jun 15, 2015 at 19:45 | comment | added | Peter Shor | @WS2: It wouldn't be called health center here. We definitely have those things, but the only terms I can think of for them are group practice or medical building, neither of which is a perfect fit. | |
| Jun 15, 2015 at 19:43 | history | edited | Jessa | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added further terminology
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| Jun 15, 2015 at 19:42 | comment | added | WS2 | @PeterShor Do you use the term health centre? A larger ones over here, with perhaps twenty doctors, would tend to be known as a health centre. | |
| Jun 15, 2015 at 19:41 | comment | added | Peter Shor | @WS2: I'd call the room where the doctor talks to and looks at patients an examination room, and not a doctor's office (the doctor's office would consist of all the rooms used by a doctor, which might contain a waiting room, examination rooms, a file room, and so forth). But I wouldn't count on all Americans using the same terminology in this regard. | |
| Jun 15, 2015 at 19:32 | comment | added | WS2 | It surprises me that you would call it an office as the room typically contains so much more than office equipment, -medical equipment, an examination couch, etc. Indeed it is a place where minor surgical procedures can be carried out. Our surgery, from which six General Practitioners operate, does have an office, but that is where the receptionist sits, as well as the staff who run the clerical functions of the practice. Seems as if we remain two nations separated by a common language. | |
| Jun 15, 2015 at 19:09 | review | First posts | |||
| Jun 15, 2015 at 19:33 | |||||
| Jun 15, 2015 at 19:08 | history | answered | Jessa | CC BY-SA 3.0 |