[kozokey]

It's your claim, based on your fancy-pants interpretation of a single word she used, that is ridiculous.

T'wit, I'm sorry, but you are just wrong on this. It is not a fancy-pants interpretation" of the word "oriented" that retMD gave. It is basic, common, universal medical terminology that is used by every person even tangentially involved with medicine, from social workers to CNAs to LPNs to attending physicians. Here is just a sampling of the word's being defined that way by several widely-used references: BehaveNet CancerWeb Online Dictionary Online-Medical-Dictionary Stedman's TheFreeDictionary About.com

As I'm sure you must realize, there are many words which have a medical meaning and then a non-medical meaning that is different. You just didn't realize that "oriented" was one of those terms. That's OK; probably a lot of people didn't know it. But at least this discussion has given us all a chance to learn something! :)

[retMD]

Thanks for pulling all these links together! Many non medical people don’t realize the specific medical meanings of certain words, just as I know there are words in other disciplines that would surprise or confuse me as to their technical meaning within those disciplines.

You obviously have medical training, legal also?

[T'wit]

kozokey, I'm sorry, you are the one who is wrong. The dictionaries you linked do not even agree on what "oriented" means. See, the word means different things to different dictionaries, so it means different things to different medical professionals, and different things in different medical specialties, and different things at different times and different things in different places. It is more oriented (oops) toward psychiatry than nursing home care. In other words, Carla Iyer's use of the word "oriented" does not have to conform to your and retMD's utterly imaginary national medical speech code.

By the way, I tried your link for Stedman's and got a search engine. So, I searched for "oriented," and got this message:

"Sorry, but the Stedman's Online Medical Dictionary doesn't recognize this term."

Hahahahahaha!