‘ay, this here be international talk like a gentleman o’ fortune day

The title of this post is a translation of “Hey, This is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.” I used a Pirate Speak translator to generate it.

Sena reminded me about this holiday, which got started back in 1995 by a couple of guys from Albany, Oregon.

She says she heard about it on the Mike Waters radio show this moring, Waters Wake-Up on the Iowa radio station KOKZ 105.7. Sena either heard Waters call it National Pirates Day or she misheard him. She also said that Waters denied that any pirates ever said “Arrr,” back in the heyday of pirates.

I beg to differ, arrr, Matey! The Wikipedia entry says that the dialect was real and probably was based on the dialect of sailors from West Country in the southwest corner of Britain.

Sena and I couldn’t find any holiday called National Pirates Day. I did find National Meow Like a Pirate Day, which, interestingly, is also a holiday today. It got started in 2015.

But the main event be international talk like a gentleman o’ fortune day—which I darn nearrr forgot!

I have a dim memory of writing a blog post using the pirate translator several years ago. It was on a different blog, which I canceled in 2018. I didn’t keep that particular post. I think the topic was teaching internal medicine doctors and medical students about delirium so that they would know when they actually need consultation from a psychiatrist.

So, in honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I’m going to post a piratical translation of one of my similar posts from way back in 2011:

“Do ye ‘ave to be interested in psychiatry to volunteer fer the delirium prevention project?”

“I’ve been thinkin’ about what a couple o’ the medical students said when I broached the idea o’ some o’ them volunteerin’ to participate in the multicomponent intervention o’ the delirium prevention project.

 they said that there the first an’ second yearrr students might want to volunteer—especially the ones interested in pursuin’ psychiatry as a career.

 now think about that there a minute. Why would ye necessarily need to be interested in psychiatry? ‘ere be a few facts:

1.Delirium be a medical emergency; it just ‘appens to mimic psychiatric illness because it’s a manifestation o’ acute brain injury.

 2.The most important treatment fer delirium be not psychiatric in nature necessarily; the goal be to find an’ fix the medical problems causin’ the delirium.

 3.Many experts in delirium ain’t psychiatrists; the authors o’ the new book “delirium in critical care”, valerie page an’ wes ely, ain’t psychiatrists—they’re intensivists.

 4.Some o’ the best teachers about delirium be geriatric nurse specialists an’ geriatricians.

 I thought that there by reachin’ aft further into a physician’s trainin’ career, I would find people less biased toward thinkin’ o’ delirium as a primary mental illness. It turns out that there bias runs deep in our medical education system.

 it isn’t that there psychiatrists shouldn’t be interested in studyin’ an’ ‘elpin’ to manage delirium. Psychiatrists, especially them specializin’ in psychosomatic medicine, be among the best qualified to inform other medical an’ surgical disciplines about the importance o’ recognizin’ delirium fer what it is—a medical problem that there threatens the brain’s integrity an’ resilience, raises the risk o’ mortality by itself regardless o’ the medical problems causin’ it, prolongs medical ‘ospitalization, an’ makes discharge to long term care facilities more likely, especially in the elderly.

 delirium be a problem fer doctors, not just psychiatrists. So it makes sense fer all medical students, regardless o’ their goals fer career specialty, to be interested in learnin’ about delirium.

 delirium be also a problem fer nurses, who frankly ‘ave led the way in education about delirium fer many years now. You’ll find few experts pointin’ to the american psychiatric association practice guidelines fer the treatment o’ delirium as the ultimate authority these days—because they’ve not been updated formally since 1999. All one ‘as to do be spell out “delirium prevention guidelines” in web browser search bars an’ choose from several sets o’ free, up-to-date guidelines that there be supported by the research evidence base in the medical literature to within a yearrr or two o’ the present day. Some o’ the best ones be authored by nurses.

 so maybe the pool o’ volunteers fer the delirium prevention multicomponent intervention might be nursin’ students.

 on the other ‘and, from what pool does the ‘ospital elder life program (help) recruit volunteers? an’ the australian resource center fer ‘ealthcare innovation multicomponent program, revive (recruitment o’ volunteers to improve vitality in the elderly, ‘ow do they do it?

they think outside the box an’ include people who care about people. That’s the really the key criterion, not whether one wants to be a psychiatrist or not.”

‘appy international talk like a gentleman o’ fortune day, arr, matey!