What do you call a building, or rooms within it, where doctors see their patients?

Question

My understanding is as follows. Is this universally agreed?

The OED sense 2a of surgery explains its use to describe the room where a doctor sees his patients. The OED gives no indication that this sense is exclusively used in Britain.

2a. The room or office in a general practitioner's house or a health centre where patients are seen and treatment is prescribed; the regular session at which a doctor receives patients for consultation in his surgery.

Nowadays where GPs work in group practices the individual rooms used by each are rarely, in my experience called surgeries. We refer to the entire building where our doctors practice as the surgery. "When you go to the village, could you call in at the surgery and collect my prescription".

As we sit in our doctors' waiting room, when our turn arrives an electronic sign with the patient's name on says 'please go to room 5'. Hence the place where you encounter the doctor is not strictly a surgery, but nowadays a room within a surgery. It is historically known as a consulting room.

As the OED explains, and as can be seen from the OED definition, a surgery is also a session during which the doctors are available to see patients. e.g. morning surgery starts at 8.00am; afternoon surgery at 3.00pm.

The OED also goes on to explain how people such as Members of Parliament, Accountants etc hold surgeries, borrowing the word from the medical profession.

1846 Bentley's Misc. June 549 A small den [Dr. Faunce] called ‘the surgery’.

1862 M. E. Braddon Lady Audley's Secret III. vii. 200 The door of the little surgery was ajar... The surgeon was standing at the mahogany counter, mixing a draught in a glass measure.

1872 L. P. Meredith Teeth (1878) 252 In some localities, the dentists..crowd their surgeries together in the same building.

1938 F. B. Young Dr. Bradley Remembers i. 1 Between six and eight..Dr. Bradley ‘took’ his evening surgery as usual.

1944 J. D. Carr Till Death do us Part xi. 113 I've got to be back..for surgery at half-past ten.

1964 D. Francis Nerve v. 73 I'm late for surgery... Those pills ought to keep him quiet.

1975 ‘J. Bell’ Victim ii. 23 Dr. Swallow was dealing with his morning surgery.

About half of your examples are not using surgery in the sense of a room, but in the sense of the act of hacking someone up. — Oldcat, Jun 16 '15 at 00:57
Note that 'the surgery', whether as a doctor's office or anything else, is just not used in AmE. — Mitch, Jun 16 '15 at 01:21

Jessa · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-15T19:43:13.960

21

This usage is not a universal in modern English.

American dialects typically refer to a doctor's office as the building and/or room used for examination. The building may also be a clinic. The room itself may be called an examination room or, in most informal spoken English, an exam room. If the doctor is practicing within a hospital, they have an office in the hospital.

Surgery is a specialized term in the USA that typically describes only the branch of medicine related to cutting people open for repairs or examination.

From the American Heritage Dictionary on surgery:

The branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of injury, deformity, and disease by the use of instruments. 2. a. Treatment based on such medicine, typically involving the removal or replacement of diseased tissue by cutting: The athlete had surgery on his knee. b. A procedure that is part of this treatment; an operation: The doctor performed three surgeries this morning.

An operating room or a laboratory of a surgeon or of a hospital's surgical staff: How long has the patient been in surgery?

Chiefly British a. A physician's, dentist's, or veterinarian's office. b. The period during which a physician, dentist, or veterinarian consults with or treats patients in the office.

edited Jun 15 '15 at 19:43

answered Jun 15 '15 at 19:08

Jessa

634

1

It surprises me that you would call it an office as the room typically contains so much more than office equipment, -medical equipment, an examination couch, etc. Indeed it is a place where minor surgical procedures can be carried out. Our surgery, from which six General Practitioners operate, does have an office, but that is where the receptionist sits, as well as the staff who run the clerical functions of the practice. Seems as if we remain two nations separated by a common language. – WS2 Jun 15 '15 at 19:32
5

@WS2: I'd call the room where the doctor talks to and looks at patients an examination room, and not a doctor's office (the doctor's office would consist of all the rooms used by a doctor, which might contain a waiting room, examination rooms, a file room, and so forth). But I wouldn't count on all Americans using the same terminology in this regard. – Peter Shor Jun 15 '15 at 19:41
@PeterShor Do you use the term health centre? A larger ones over here, with perhaps twenty doctors, would tend to be known as a health centre. – WS2 Jun 15 '15 at 19:42
@WS2: It wouldn't be called health center here. We definitely have those things, but the only terms I can think of for them are group practice or medical building, neither of which is a perfect fit. – Peter Shor Jun 15 '15 at 19:45
2

In Northern California at least, health center isn't a common term. I doubt I've ever heard it used here. Clinic would be more typical. Medical center is sometimes used for large, non-hospital medical facilities. – Jessa Jun 15 '15 at 19:47
@PeterShor we also use the term group practice. But this is a new arrival on the health scene here. It is more than a doctor's practice but less than a hospital. This one was built because it is ten miles from the nearest hospital and Accident & Emergency Unit. – WS2 Jun 15 '15 at 19:52
3

Just to agree: surgery is either the OR, or the activity performed in it. Either way, scalpels will be involved. You visit the doctor at her office (if she's the only MD there) or her clinic (if multiple doctors share the space). The actual room with the exam table, scale, etc. is called the exam room or examination room. IME, medical center is a hospital plus all the medical facilities that have grown up around it. Health center is either the free clinic on a college campus, or it's an "alternative medicine" facility. – Marthaª Jun 15 '15 at 20:27
2

@Marthaª: Interesting. I'm a native AmE speaker, and I never thought of surgery as referring to the operating room. To me it's the act of operating on a patient, and never refers to a physical place. When you say the patient is in surgery, I don't understand that as giving her location, but just to mean that she is undergoing a medical operation. I guess I see in surgery as being analogous to in pain or in labor; it describes a person's state of being, not their location. – Nate Eldredge Jun 16 '15 at 06:29
@NateEldredge And all that would be the case in Britain too. Being in surgery means undergoing an operation. But used with an article surgery can and mostly does refer either to the building from which a group of doctors practice, or to an open session - morning surgery starts at 8.00am. As Jessa points out in her answer it is meaning 3 in Merriam Webster. – WS2 Jun 16 '15 at 12:13
Partly the confusion could stem from the fact that dentists actually do cut in to the body in their offices, and veterinarians may well do that also but General Practitioners might never cut in to any bodies except for extremely minor procedures such as biopsies (performed with a simple instrument, not a deep invasion of the body, which would require much more preparation and equipment). The folks who actually perform surgery are properly called Surgeons, and they are highly trained and specialized. You could go your whole life without ever consulting one. Can particular terms stay specific? – May 12 '16 at 15:23

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 15 '15 at 19:12

8

I have always heard the building as a whole called the "doctor's office", and the particular room where the doctor sees you the "examination room".

answered Jun 15 '15 at 19:12

Alex Henrie

291

4

There's also the term clinic, often used when more than one doctor works there. – J.R. Jun 15 '15 at 19:15
1

In Britain a clinic is usual something of a specialist nature that is set up for the purpose - such as an ante-natal clinic. There are also post-natal clinics run by midwives where new-born babies are taken for regular check-ups. – WS2 Jun 15 '15 at 21:41

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 15 '15 at 21:00

4

There is also the widely used "consultation room", although many dictionaries apparently have "consulting room" instead.

answered Jun 15 '15 at 21:00

Marc

41

2

In Britain it is known as a consulting room - sometimes parodied as an insulting room! – WS2 Jun 15 '15 at 21:34

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 16 '15 at 14:08

1

As a non-native speaker, the word practice came to mind. From Wiktionary:

A place where a professional service is provided, such as a general practice. She ran a thriving medical practice.

answered Jun 16 '15 at 14:08

mb21

151

1

Yes. We also speak about a doctors' practice. But the term practice is rarely applied to the building or the address from which they operate. – WS2 Jun 16 '15 at 14:28
Old Joke: One Doctor says to another, "When do we get to stop practicing medicine and start doing it for real?" – May 12 '16 at 15:25

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 15 '15 at 20:22

0

Doctors see their patients in: doctor's offices, outpatient facilities, hospitals and clinics. Surgery is Chiefly British (unless you are in the operating room, being operated on by a surgeon.) I heard some doctors still make house calls.

answered Jun 15 '15 at 20:22

senyb

448

House calls are rare, but for infirm people and in appropriate circumstances, especially if you are well known to the doctor, some will do that. When our children were little, about 30 years ago, our village doctor would sometimes call by if they were sick. – WS2 Jun 15 '15 at 21:38
Funny how "call" nowadays means telephone call and the meaning of "visit" has basically vanished. – May 12 '16 at 15:26

What do you call a building, or rooms within it, where doctors see their patients?

5 Answers5

Linked