Monday, March 15, 2010

When dictation goes bad

This has to be one of the most bizarre dictation/transcription errors I've ever seen. It was in another physician's note. I have no idea what the original phrase could have been.

For my non-medical readers- a C-arm fluoroscopy is a large piece of metal equipment used for radiology procedures.

(click to enlarge)

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16 comments:

  1. SarahMarch 15, 2010 at 8:31 AM

    Oh, I'll play. Seated female?

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  2. DemiMarch 15, 2010 at 9:04 AM

    One of my favorites ever was under surgical history: Vaginal hysterectomy with excision of wisdom teeth.

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  3. TheLittleFlowerMarch 15, 2010 at 9:22 AM

    Caucasian [C-arm] female [fluoroscopy].
    I'm always wondering about homophones and dictation software. I imagine that with the rise of computerized dictation this is going to happen more and more often. Funny and scary at the same time.

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  4. DonnaMarch 15, 2010 at 9:30 AM

    I'm a transcriptionist and wonder if they used incorrect shortcut keys for whatever was dictated, or it could have been produce by speech recoginition software and not caught by the dictator or the editor. I work for a group of orthopedists and occasionally play their dictation bloopers back to them at their Christmas party with commentary.

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  5. stewbertMarch 15, 2010 at 9:59 AM

    I'm with Donna. It was probably transcriptionist shortcut error. lol

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  6. The MotherMarch 15, 2010 at 10:37 AM

    Those medical gizmos are getting so sentient these days that they need their own doctor's appointments? Cool.

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  7. Cthulhu SashimiMarch 15, 2010 at 11:22 AM

    Technically, wouldn't the piece of equipment itself be a "C-arm fluoroscope," and "C-arm fluoroscopy" be what you do with it? So that would make the patient an action.

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  8. AnonymousMarch 15, 2010 at 11:24 AM

    Maybe it was Caucasian female C-arm technician?? Would have to confirm that with social history??

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  9. PinkMarch 15, 2010 at 1:15 PM

    It has all of the telltale signs of an expander mistake by an MT - a "dragonism," if you will. I use "cauc" for Caucasian. I'm sure the MT messed up the Caucasian female expander with the C-arm fluoroscopy one.

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  10. UnknownMarch 15, 2010 at 3:20 PM

    I've seen CAF for "Chinese-American female", so something like that is my guess ... my favorite, though, is my partner's dictation that said the patient was allergic to "steel bananas". We have no idea what she actually said.

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  11. horse on a mattressMarch 15, 2010 at 3:35 PM

    I think there's a good chance Pink is right, but it's equally likely to be a speech recognition hiccup. I love seeing docs notice stuff like this in charts-- it serves as a reminder to take SR software vendors' accuracy statistics with a pretty big lump o' salt. More fun with transcription/SR bloopers here. . . .Yeah, that was a bit of shameless blog-whoring. =)

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  12. horse on a mattressMarch 15, 2010 at 6:16 PM

    Ooops. Prior comment was posted in haste -- the link's bad. This is the correct link. (And that, brethren and sistren, is why whoring is a sin).

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  13. AnonymousMarch 15, 2010 at 8:52 PM

    sierran florist hopi

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  14. AnonymousMarch 16, 2010 at 12:24 AM

    I said the sentence aloud and it seems to me (if the voice recognition software tries to match words based on the first syllable) the phrase could have been "senior citizen." 'C-arm' could sound line 'senior' to a computer, and 'flouroscopy' would be the next logical word to follow (again, to a computer).

    The next words in the sentence, "who looks stated age," would then make sense. If I am right, the sentence would be a bit redundant.

    Word Verification: thorgate ???

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  15. AnonymousMarch 16, 2010 at 5:42 PM

    c-arm fluoroscopist. radiology tech. presumably in a busy or.

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  16. bbMarch 18, 2010 at 10:42 PM

    Thought you'd enjoy this typo.

    At my office, we were filing an brief with the appellate court. The public prosecutor was filing an amicus curiae brief. They needed an extension in which to file their brief. They filed a request for an extension with that court. In that request, they identified themselves as the public prosecutor. It became obvious that they did not proof the request for extension but simply did a spell check which would not have picked up the very funny typo. They left out the "L" in the word "public." We had a lot of fun and a very good laugh at their expense as they identified themselves as the "pubic prosecutor" and filed that with the appeals court.

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So wadda you think?