Upgraded vs Downgraded

Upgraded means an improvement; downgraded means getting worse.

Nothing more complicated that "up" v. "down". In a hospital setting, being "upgraded" to critical condition would basically mean being raised from the dead. Are you writing a story about zombies?

caw

I can see how you'd confuse yourself, though. We upgrade to red alert, don't we? The calm, green times are at the bottom, and the red is at the top, so... up.

It depends whether the grade is based on the patient's condition or the rating system itself.

That said, in the medical sense I think we base it on the patient's condition, and a google search of the terms confirms that. We upgrade to the better, less severe ratings.

I don't touch general nursing with a barge pole but I'm pretty sure they'd think of it as upgrading the level of care and observation because of the deteriorated condition of the patient.

If I'm wrong, a general nurse can disabuse me of this notion.

Rufus Coppertop said:

I don't touch general nursing with a barge pole but I'm pretty sure they'd think of it as upgrading the level of care and observation because of the deteriorated condition of the patient.

If I'm wrong, a general nurse can disabuse me of this notion.

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But it's the patient's condition that's upgraded or downgraded; the level of care is adjusted based on that.

At Overthinkers Anonymous, an added layer of superfluous rationalization is considered unproductive, and the thinker is downgraded for upgrading.

The level of care has been increased. The patient's condition has deteriorated.

Actually I wouldn't use up/downgraded to describe this situation at all. I think usually when people think of these words they think of something shifting to upper or lower quality that is not strictly necessary. Like, I have been upgraded to a first class seat, I've downgraded to basic Spotify service, etc. So I would pick different words.

Hapax Legomenon said:

Actually I wouldn't use up/downgraded to describe this situation at all.

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Maybe you wouldn't, but these are the terms generally used, I believe.

caw

You could say he was bumped up/over/down (depending on the layout of your hospital) to ICU (Intensive Care if you want to avoid acronyms).

As ever, Google is your friend. I Googled both "upgrade to critical care" and "downgrade to critical care". Then "upgrade to critical condition" and "downgrade to critical condition". None of these searches found much of interest. These don't seem to be phrases that are used much.

Then Googling "medical state" I found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_state

This does mention upgrading and downgrading, but it also states that

"These terms are most commonly used by the news media and are rarely used by physicians, who in their daily business prefer to deal with medical problems in greater detail."

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My gut feel here is that a medical condition is not like the DEFCON scale. The medical profession rarely talks about upgrading or downgrading someone to critical as we might talk about moving to DEFCON 3. Instead, amongst themselves they refer to a patient's actual situation in more detail. And when talking to the media they would say that someone "is in" a stable condition, or whatever.

This may be more for the experts wanted thread than grammar.

Once! said:

As ever, Google is your friend. I Googled both "upgrade to critical care" and "downgrade to critical care". Then "upgrade to critical condition" and "downgrade to critical condition". None of these searches found much of interest. These don't seem to be phrases that are used much.

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There are 202 thousand results for "downgraded to critical condition" and 141 thousand for "upgraded to critical condition".

How many results do you need to consider something "much of interest"?

shadowwalker said:

But it's the patient's condition that's upgraded or downgraded; the level of care is adjusted based on that.

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Terminology varies from hospital to hospital.

In some hospitals, they term it upgrading to critical. In others, it's downgrading to critical.

In hospitals that upgrade to critical, they apply the word upgrade to the level of care needed and increase it accordingly.

In hospitals that downgrade to critical, they apply the word downgrade to the patient's actual condition which also requires an increased level of care.