Holy Verbal Chernobyl! CMO Injured When Jargon-Bomb Detonates Accidentally
By Dan Waters DO MA
Published on 11/11/2025
A Midwestern hospital’s top Physician Executive was injured and two MHA’s in close proximity were shaken up last week when a “jargon-bomb” exploded during an unnecessary evening meeting. Fortunately, the physician Medical Directors in mandatory attendance were all seated a safe distance away and escaped serious harm. The CMO, whose name was withheld pending notification of the hospital’s attorney and parent company, was reportedly responding to "a simple Yes or No question” when the J.Q. (Jargon Quotient) of his reply rapidly exceeded critical mass and detonated.
“It was like a flash-bang,” said trauma surgeon Danielle Rivers, who was seated nearest the blast. “I was in the process of tuning out yet another opaque non-answer when literally all Hell broke loose. People hit the deck. I instinctively dove for cover. Post-It Notes, spreadsheets and felt-tip markers went flying everywhere. If Dr. [REDACTED] hadn’t placed his seat on a riser so he could look down on us, well, it could have been a lot worse.”
Dr. Rivers said she received a painful paper cut from the administrative shrapnel and only narrowly avoided being struck by a falling whiteboard. She did not seek medical attention.
“Our initial assumption was, of course, that this was the work of a malicious, disruptive physician,” stated BorgONE CEO Rob Flater, MBA. “But we now believe it was a completely unforeseeable accident and so it was definitely not our fault in any way whatsoever. So help me God.”
Details of the events leading up to the accident were sketchy due to the general inattention being paid by those physicians present. One said he remembered feeling uneasy when the CMO’s trope-laden response exceeded the usual half-dozen or so administrative buzzwords.
“I can explain the physics of it to you,” said the doctor, who wished to remain nameless due to fear of retaliation after recently signing a lucrative PSA contract with the hospital. “But it’s like a nuclear reaction – one term too many and it becomes immediately and exponentially self-propagating – then, KA-BOOM. In less than five seconds you’ve got a real Verbal Chernobyl on your hands.”
Plastic surgeon Carlos Danger, MD, accidentally recorded the meeting while swiping Tinder profiles on his cell phone and agreed to share the audio with us (for a cash sum). Digital acoustic analysis was able to tease out the following:
[WOMAN SPEAKING] “Are there any plans to upgrade the Female O.R Locker Room? I think raccoons are living behind the sinks.”
[CMO SPEAKING] “You know, that is a GREAT question. And I want to be completely transparent here. What we and Senior Leadership are looking at doing is performing a deep-dive. Deep enough so we can drill down and peel this onion, one layer at a time. This will allow us to mobilize our resources in pursuit of robust, granular data sets which will permit us to project budget-neutrality while staying radically proactive, thus achieving both value-added and just-in-time economies of scale. Foremost, of course, is accomplishing this while preserving the idea of a Just Culture that mirrors our corporate values along with learnings (sic) from LEAN and Six Sigma analyses, which indicate tha- [LOUD NOISE FOLLOWED BY SCREAMS AND RAISED VOICES]
The hospital would say only that the CMO sustained non-career-threatening injuries and that he and the MHA’s would be receiving merit bonuses and hazard pay as rewards for their valor and agreement not to sue.
There was no mention of concern for any of the physicians.
Dan Waters DO MA is a retired Cardiothoracic Surgeon who has published extensively in the medicine, fiction, and satire. His books can be found at Bandageman Press.https://bandagemanpress.com/
