HALLWAY MEDICINE

(HAWL.way MED.uh.sin)

n.

The practice of leaving patients on gurneys in hallways during all or most of their hospital stay because there are no available rooms in wards.

Further west, in Winnipeg, 'hallway medicine' has become so routine that hallway stretcher locations have permanent numbers.

— James Brooke, "Full Hospitals Make Canadians Wait and Look South,"The New York Times, January 16, 2000

In June, the Olive View team operated at 223% of capacity — once again beating the three other county maternity wards.

Until recently, the staff coped by practicinghallway medicine.When all the labor rooms were filled, women with fetal monitors strapped to their swollen bellies were lined up on gurneys in the hallway.

— Lynn O'Shaughnessy, "Baby boom pushes a hosptial to limit,"Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1990

bed blocker

beeper medicine

cancer refugee

concierge care

hit-and-run nursing

hospitalist

narrative medicine

nocturnist

on-call-ogist

sicker and quicker

slow medicine

street nurse

surgicalist

wallet biopsy

Medicine