GOMERs

The divide between the doctor and patient is perhaps widest at this point in an MD’s career.1 There’s a whole lingo that goes along with this sense of separateness: patients who are elderly, have unfixable ailments, or are suspected of hypochondria are called GOMERs (as in Get Out of My Emergency Room); patients with multisystem disease are described as having PPP, Piss-Poor Protoplasm; children with pervasive developmental disorder are FLK (Funny-Looking Kids).

After the Diagnosis MD Julian Seifter 2010

Or wait a day in a clinic in a rival 'hood surrounded by gangstas not kindly disposed to you being there, or old GOMERs facing an 80-buck cab bill or 2 hours of bus and subway hassle...

"If you were really savvy, you'd 'manipulate' the media into a stampede of lurid drivel deriding her as a Stepford wife and a dominatrix..." Ann Althouse 2008

We’re taught this when we’re interns, under pressure to make fast, accurate judgments on busy nights when the admissions are pouring in: weed out the hypochondriacs, the GOMERs, to make room for the ones who are critically ill.

After the Diagnosis MD Julian Seifter 2010