I’ve always heard “STAT” tossed around, but on my napkin sketch of Latin roots it traces to statim = immediately — does anyone know when it first started showing up in U.S. hospital dictations? I saw it three times in a 5 a.m. ER batch today and wondered if the wax-cylinder era docs were saying it too.
I’ve seen it in typed op notes from the late ’40s/early ’50s in our county archive — on older recordings they’d say “at once,” but the transcript often renders it as “STAT.” One trick from digging those up: search old PDFs for phrasing like “X-ray STAT” or “to lab STAT” to catch early uses. Got access to any pre-’50s samples to check?
Your 5 a.m. ER batch fits modern usage; early dictations said “immediately,” with “stat.” in 1910s texts…