Forgive me for asking. This is soooo unimportant compared with our real problems.
I’m reading conversations and find my terminology lacking. What is a Practice Manager? What is Surgery? (To me, surgery is the operating room where I worked for 30 years. The surgeon is the doctor doing the cutting and repair).
Lastly, is there a difference between an apothecary and a pharmacy?
Thank you kindly, all!
Our primary care doctors have someone who manages the day to day running of the doctor’s office, the reception staff, Nurses, the appointment system and everything else that enables the doctors to get on with being doctors. The collective name is the doctor’s practice. As for the Apothecary and the Pharmacy. Does the former actually mix drugs and powders in the old fashioned way, and the Pharmacist orders ready made drugs in from outside suppliers?
Hi FohFoh
The practice manager is the senior administrator/ manager of a doctor's office practice. Typically such a practice employs about 6-12 doctors called general practitioners (your primary care practitioners), as well as a range of nurses and ancillary staff. The building where these staff are based is known as ‘the surgery’ (confusing, as we also refer to people who carry out surgical operations as surgeons 🤷♀️).
A pharmacy dispenses prescribed medications and also sells non- prescribed ones (called ‘over the counter’ ) like aspirin, ibuprofen and supplements.
I hope this helps. There are no unimportant questions! 😊x
i suppose surgery dates back to when the local doctor was also the person who carried out minor surgery ...
Bit of useless information...
Q. Why are one-to-one meetings with local MPs, (usually held on a Friday afternoon - returning home for weekend) called surgeries?
A. A surgery refers to any work done personally or by hand. It applies in this case because an MP's surgery is a personal meeting with an MP.
So actually - GPs need to stop calling their practices surgeries since they seem to have handed over much of the responsibility to others. Is a telephone call a "personal meeting"?
Depends on your view I suppose...not sure many UK GPs "do" personal anymore 🙄
I believe phone calls are recorded as consultations- they are rarely this in reality, and nor are they ‘personal meetings’ in my view 🤷♀️
Mine neither
D2C you are on the same side as fohfoh so will be muddled as well.
SJ and Nextoneplease have covered the bases. Operations are carried out in operating theatres. Surgeons do cut people up. The surgery is however the Doctors buildings but also describes what a surgeon does. Apothecary is an arcane term not used. The pharmacist is probably better qualified than the Dr. on meds. and dispenses drugs according to prescriptions. As for practice manager and their practice, the explanations given are correct. However, I always feel I am being practiced on as half the time I reckon they are just guessing because they don't know. 
Hi again FohFoh
One thing I should perhaps add, although you didn’t ask, is that in the UK, most health care is accessed via the GPs (aka general practitioners) who work in ‘surgeries’ (aka offices) as described above. GPs are contracted to our National Health Service (NHS) but are not directly employed by it. They are the gatekeepers to specialist care through consultants…..so sometimes we see a GP for their care/advice/prescriptions, but often also for onward referral to a specialist.
The exception is if you are able to pay privately, when you can choose to access specialist advice directly.
Sorry for blathering on…..I find these differences interesting 🤔
In the US, would you normally see a primary care practitioner about a problem, as we normally do, or select a specialist and go directly there?
The situation is similar in the US. Need to see your primary care doc before you go to a specialist; however, that is dependent on the type of insurance one has, but most medical care is “managed care”. It’s a racket, in some ways, because insurance companies control a patient’s care, sometimes unreasonably so. What I mean to say is that sometimes there is a delay of care when someone is ailing. Understand that I’m very grateful for the care I AM able to receive, especially since I turned 65. Healthcare can be better, for sure.
FohFoh - very good questions - l’ll put together a list of terms & add to our FAQ’s & will include any Australian Terms as well - it’s all English but not as we know it! 😉
I thought you might. Perhaps Fo Fo could help with American terminology. I wonder if it differs much from Canadian. Of course we have Europeans too. I once paid a few pounds into a ticket machine in the stunningly beautiful Venice hospital for an extremely handsome George Clooney lookalike to put three stitches in my 4 year olds head, after he had ran into a fountain. This included a speedboat ride to the hospital across the lagoon. Very good value I thought. Tiny little scar. Many helpful Venetians, memorable!
Yes Jane, I’ll do a Spreadsheet then l can put it alphabetical order - all suggestions appreciated 😉
There are British words used that have made me smile and require me to go to Google to find the meaning. My favorite is 'niggle'. My great grandmother came from Essex so I wonder if she used the terms mentioned in this forum. I love it! I have Canadian family who use a few terms we don't in the USA but not many.
english is a beautiful and endlessly flexible language. such fun
Don’t get us started on various words and phrases used in different parts of the UK…..for such a small landmass we have a myriad of parochial/provincial sayings.
Same in the USA....I had a roommate in college from across the country. I almost needed an interpreter when she spoke!
Yes I’m sure…but you’re talking thousands of miles, we’re talking hundreds (a lot less in some cases)…But all adds to the rich tapestry of life.😊
Adacent villages/towns in the north. It never seems so obvious in the south!
Too true. Susan came this morning and then the electrician, we were talking about the 'spuggies' visiting the bird feeder. He lives 15 miles down the road - never heard of 'spuggies' they call them 'spadgers'
Sparrows, just in case you are wondering.
I know what spuggies are - wouldn't have recognised spadgers though!
Spaggies down here!
often spidges here
Southwest bit more than them thar Londoners!
Yeppper!
In Texas alone we have several different dialects!
Exactly! People from Georgia talk much different than Texans. Anymore it’s hard to differentiate between the southern U.S. states. I used to have that ability, but too much intermingling in today’s age. Also, anyone north of the Mason Dixon line spoke Yankee! And mountainous regions spoke their own dialect. They were hillybillys.
The Brits call All Americans Yankees! They have No idea!
Not so, my British friends! It’s all about that mason Dixon line! ( civil war Throw back.)
My mother’s parents were hillbilly. From West Virginia.. they had the wherewithal to get the heck outta there when they married and moved to Pennsylvania. A lot of the hillbilly lingered on, for sure. They were a bit strange, but they loved us for sure, in their way.
Which reflects the immense history of the land. I've heard that the Newfoundland dialect may be very close English as Shakespeare spoke it.
My meister has been taken badly.My husband is ill - Yorkshire. ☺️
In Texas alone we have several different dialects!
I have a slight suspicion that I popularized the word niggles to refer to minor PMR symptoms.
But we Brits will have used it - I remember being asked what it meant!
I know, and it seems like an English word to me, not Canadian. But when I first used it here I was asked what I meant, don't know by whom, they required a definition in the context of PMR . I have noticed it's more often used these days.😼
Yes we have!
I picked up the term "niggles" about 5 years ago, from you wonderful women...Since then, I have Used it often, and now I chuckle to hear the very same word frequently sprinkled through friend's conversations,
I’d love to help with American terminology! Anyone, anytime!
All my knowledge comes from watching Doc Martin! His office is called a "surgery." When he calls a new patient to come into his office, he always says "come through," whereas in the U.S. we'd say "come in."
Nowadays I would be called a pharmacist although when I finished uni I qualified as a "Chemist & Druggist". The word apothecary would be applied to a pharmacist from medieval times.
Actually it’s a very good question…and another reason why we ask our members to include their country of residence on their profile.
It’s very easy to assume everyone knows what you mean when posting about services, protocol, drugs etc, but when you have a multinational audience it’s sometimes gets lost in translation!
As once allegedly said by George Bernard Shaw - or maybe Oscar Wilde (both Irishman) depends who you believe -
“England and America are two countries separated by the same language!”
Although nearer is this similar idea expressed by Oscar Wilde in The Canterville Ghost, 1887, some years earlier than Shaw was supposed to have said it -
"We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language".
# you can of course, substitute “America” for any other English speaking country!
I actually own a wee paperback for the use of Americans, by which I mean people from the United States, translating common words from English to American. 😂
Hahaha! Wilde and Shaw were both right! For me, personally, this new connection I have with the website, aside from the obvious, has given me a new opportunity to learn more about the people of my ancestry. Or part of it, anyway. I’m a bit of a mutt, actually. British, Welsh and Eastern Europe, or what was once Yugoslavia.
Most Brits (or at least the English) are mutts anyways…right back to Anglo Saxons, (Germanic), Vikings*, Romans etc etc……
* see link - healthunlocked.com/pmrgcauk...
And, most older British people will stick with 'chemist' rather than 'pharmacist'. My son's friend was off to uni and an old man from his Devon village asked him what he was going to study. He replied 'Pharmacy' and the old man said, 'So you want to be a farmer then?'
Love it! Will have to ask my grandson - he's doing pharmacy ...
I grew up in Nova Scotia with the words drugstore (still used) and druggist (for perhaps obvious reason, now disused). Since pandemic I'd say pharmacy has become preferred word, at least that's what media use.
Yeah, I lived in the US as a kid but have been in Ontario for most of my life. We always used Drugstore in both locations until recent years. I've been saying Pharmacy for quite a while before covid but I'm guessing it's because all the drug stores have signs that say "Pharmacy", a word that to me used to sound very formal LOL
It has just occurred to me - in the UK we often used to refer to shops like Superdrug as drugstores. Not sure if that is still the case but ironically - they don't have pharmacies in the majority of their stores, they only sell OTC medications and that excludes a range where a pharmacist must be on the premises for them to be sold. Otherwise they sell health and beauty products. Boots, on the other hand, was Boots the Chemist until the name was changed to Boots UK Limited.
In North America, "Surgery" is performed by a surgeon in an operating room or theatre. Usually, we call it the OR. My grandfather was a surgeon. A surgeon removed my colon cancer in a more than 6-hour operation. My "family doctor or GP, General Practitioner" who gives me flu shots, heartburn pill prescriptions and check-ups has a "practice" which is her "business" ie patients, office, office staff etc. Sometimes a retiring doctor or lawyer will sell their practice. We never hear the term apothecary here but I think of it as the old-fashioned form of a pharmacy, probably in England, where they used to make or mix the drugs in-house so I assume that today the names might be interchangeable depending upon the country. I could be wrong. I have only lived in Canada and the US. Pharmacists can be very knowledgeable. I will often ask my pharmacist about something rather than make an appointment to see my doctor, especially if it's about drugs.
You are very unlikely to hear the term apothecary used in the UK - but in all German-speaking countries the chemist shop/pharmacy is called the Apotheke. Chemist in the UK is really a shop that sells health and personal care products - and most also have a section where prescription drugs are dispensed and OTC medicinal products sold.
Here when I live in German-speaking northern Italy the Apotheke is also called the Pharmacia (Italian) and many of them here are what are called compounding chemists - they also prepare medications, like the apothecary in the past.
I went to Bolzano for my grandson's hockey tournament (they won the world championship there) Maybe that was near you. We took a cable car up to the top of a mountain and there was a German village at the top but we were still in Italy. People hiking with sticks and wearing lederhosen. It was awesome. I loved it. My only ever trip to Italy.
Bozen (German name)/Bolzano (Italian name) is the regional capital and about an hour's drive from me. A very high proportion of the population identifies as German speaking, 95% in the valley where I live. Some people refuse to speak Italian - that dates back to the Fascist period after WW1 when Rome tried to force Italian culture on residents who, until the Allies carved up Europe and handed them over to Itay, had been Austrians. People wearing lederhosen were probably Bavarian tourists - they think South Tirol belongs to them 
- although the Tracht here includes leather breeches they are far fancier than everyday Lederhosen and wouldn't be used for a simple hike - though they WOULD wear them during a pilrimage up a mountain ...
I love the mountains. Working in the paper industry I have spent much time in British Columbia. But one thing that struck me about that cable car ride and the entire area was that there was no deforestation. The trees are beautiful. If that had been Canada those mountains would have been clear cut
It's pretty bare above the treeline here too - starts at 2000m on the edges of the Alps, a mere 6,500ft. Our mountains aren't as high as Canada's
Lots of lovely stark mountains in the Dolomites
Or a drugstore. I use pharmacy on here, in real life it's the drugstore. A doctor has an office, not a surgery, which is an operation. And a pharmacist works at our drugstore, not a chemist or an apothecary. 😆
I have never known what to call the person who sits at the desk and checks you in for your appointment. Receptionist?
Depends how polite they are! 😳
In our GPs, they are receptionists
ours too. They are good at mine. We have a computerised clock in system for appointments so no need for receptionist. Go straight to pharmacy in reception for meds. on prescription. Text when ready for collection. 1 day normally for turn around service if short. Ftf with Dr if needed and blood tests or ecg. 24hr if needed. Can't complain.
Good heavens, your surgery sounds amazing!! Ours has a seven (yes, seven) day turnaround for prescriptions!
I can usually wait 15 minutes
FohFoh
Look what you’ve started! We’ll all learn a lot 😊x
I love this site. 😁
Me too 😊
Exactly.
*Boots the Chemist*. Thinking about that name, one would think it’s a more appropriate name for a shoe shop.
Good morning everyone. 👍
Don’t get started on Schools!
Public - (can also be called private or independent) school in England (although not all of UK) is a fee paying school -
whereas in US I believe it means it’s a state funded school with no fees to scholars.
This is AWESOME knowledge! Thank you!
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