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Tip: Make the change from COWs to WOWs

EHR Connection, June 11, 2007

Imagine being in a hospital room as either a patient or a visitor and overhearing nurses outside the door discuss "moving the COW." The staff members are likely referring to a computer on wheels and using the common, though unflattering, COW acronym to describe it.

Although your employees mean no harm, the abbreviation could lead to confrontation if already stressed patients--or their friends and family visiting them--think the COW talk is about them and not the computer out in the hall.

It didn't take an uncomfortable situation like that for the University of Utah Hospitals to change their acronym from COWs to WOWs--"workstations on wheels." Luckily, says Chief Safety Officer Murray Hayward, a department manager thinking on her feet figured out the dilemma.

"We call them WOWs and not COWs here, in consideration of any possible misunderstanding with patients," Hayward says.

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