Fun with abbreviations and misreadings: Has anyone out there met misunderstanding like this ?The Times reports some examples from hospital notes. So, someone told a visitor that their mother was 'Dead On Arrival'; DOA meant 'Date Of Admission' but not, evidently, in Accident and Emergency where the speaker had been working before ! 'SoB' on his notes led to complaints by the subject. It really meant 'shortness of breath' not 'son of a bitch'. There was one good misreading too. A patient was shown as 'works in a whorehouse'. Well, it was an industrial injury; but the worker was from a warehouse !

When I took EMS training some years ago, I had to do several ER rotations. And oh yes - the abbreviations! (I always liked the "SOB" one too! )

The hospital had a policy of assigning a code name to emergency patients who did not have full ID on them so that a chart could be started for them anyway. For men, the code name was a country.
During my last rotation, victims from a two-vehicle accident were brought in. They all had the same REAL last name of Ireland* (the man in the truck, and the woman and two children in the car). The two children were still in the ER, in separate rooms.
Later a man was admitted for a high fever. He was assigned the code name "Ireland"!
Not to make light of serious events, but it was rather confusing:
"Take Ireland's BP." "Which Ireland?" "THAT Ireland!"
"Has Ireland been stitched up yet?" "For a FEVER?!"
"Has Ireland's husband been contacted yet?" "I thought his WIFE brought him in!"
Trust me - you just HAD to be there!

*True event, but the actual last name has been changed to protect the patients.

I haven't had any particulary funny situations that I can think of right now (although, reading TIE's reply, EMS does bring to mind Eastern Mountain Sports to me moreso than Emergency Medical Servies), but i thought this might interest you. AcronymFinder shows just how many things share acronyms. For example, it returns 76 different results for EMS.