When immodest medical jargon is used as a slogan

MANY years back, while I was waiting for the traffic light to turn green on Ortigas Avenue corner EDSA in Metro Manila, my wife Leonor nudged me and pointed to an undulating phrase and image painted prominently on the side of a brand-new hospital ambulance that had stopped beside our car. The phrase was this hospital motto: "Patient on Center Stage, Service of Greater Worth."

Leonor said with a scowl: "That motto not only confuses me but gives me the creeps. If I were a patient in a hospital, I wouldn't want to be placed on center stage. I'd rather that they put me in a nice private room where only the doctors and nurses can efficiently but discreetly attend to me until I got well."