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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!

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.

Behavenet: "subject correctly identifies familiar individuals, and provides the correct time and date, place, and geographical location."

CancerWeb: "Awareness of one's environment, with reference to person, time and place."

Medical dictionary Online: "Awareness of oneself in relation to time, place and person."

Free dictionary: awareness of one's environment with reference to time, place, and people.

About.com: ORIENTATION - The health care provider will ask questions that may include: * The time, date, and season * The place where the person lives, type of building, city and state * The person's name, age, and occupation
(this is much more detailed than most would require to call someone "oriented," but exact same idea: person, place, time.)

Stedman's has it under orientation "The recognition of one's temporal, spatial, and personal relationships and environment."

And just in case you feel these aren't sufficiently related to nursing, here are the ones I found for you yesterday:

Taking Vital Signs (basic patient evaluation): "Signifies orientation to person, place, time, and event. "

RN.com's Assessment series: ' Orientation with reference to time, place, and person."

RNcentral.com: "Orient to person, place, and time"

So in what way were these "all different"? All seem to say the same thing - ability to identify person, place and time.

Here's a few more for you:
System for nursing assessment. Note about 1/5 of the way down on the right, the form has "Alert & oriented to person, place and time."

Here's another form: Adult Nursing Assessment. Note under "psycho social" a check off for "Disorientation time/place/person."

This one is a sample page under "neurologic assessment" in a book called "Nursing Assessment and Diagnosis." You may have to scroll down a little, to where it says "Level of consciousness is assessed several ways. This is done by checking a client's orientation to person, place and time..."

Talk to any nurse, doctor, paramedic or EMT. This is standard stuff, used all over the country, (and Canada, and probably most other countries as well.) It is basic patient assessment. Most medical facilties that have an admitting form will have a place for orientation. Ambulance forms have a place for orientation.

So have you found a Freeper doc so you can verify the medical meaning of “alert and oriented”? I know of a few, armydoc, timydnuc, hocndoc, polybius. I’m expect there are more that I don’t know of.

This is standard medical terminology, and I’m sure one of them can quickly clarify for you exactly what it means when a nurse or doctor says, “the patient is alert and oriented.”

T'wit, of course they are not word-for-word the same, but every entry for "oriented" or "orientation" describes the patient's ability to identify herself with respect to person, place, and time. You are being disingenuous, and that is beneath you.

From Stedman's:

orientation (r--en-tshn) 1. The recognition of one's temporal, spatial, and personal relationships and environment.

The other links I gave you all had similar definitions for "oriented" or "orientation". Shall I copy them all to this thread, or can you just admit the obvious? There's no need to get your ego bruised over this. Everybody makes a mistake sometime.