Layman's Terms

"Do you want me to take an ECG on him?", the extremely lovely nurse asks me. The junior doctors have all gone to lunch and she seems to think that in their absence I constitute some kind of feasible replacement. I bask in the glory of having somebody assume that I have the faintest idea what this patient needs, before sneakily telling her that he probably doesn't need an ECG but that she should double check with somebody else later.
"Could you fill out his drug chart?" She isn't taking the hint. Yes, I could fill out the drug form, with his name, patient number and known allergies, but despite the fact that me giving him any drugs is distinctly illegal, I wouldn't even know if aspirin would be a good idea. I smile, and say that I know how to but I'm not allowed. She smiles back. How rare.
The junior doctors finally reappear, smirking with each other about the 300ml of pus they just drained from a wound.
"300ml, about the size of a can of coke" I say, I am the embodiment of medical description. "Yep", says a junior doctor, with a giggle. They are mostly female and today they seem mostly cheerful.
At that second, a registrar, who has come to the ward to fill in my assessment form, appears from nowhere. Did he hear my razor sharp coke-can one-liner? Luckily, it appears not.
He gives me a rough grade for my attendance, interest, knowledge, and all manner of other vague criteria, taking breaks to ask me spontaneous questions based on notes he finds littered around the nurse's station. I do alright, mostly Bs and Cs. The last criterion is "communication".
"How would you describe yourself here?", he asks me, honestly expecting me to give an answer different to "good, fine".
"What about with patients, talking in layman's terms?" he asks. The junior doctors giggle close by, sipping their cokes.
Bugger, he heard me. Luckily, he turned out to be the most likeable surgical registrar in the entire hospital. We spent a further 20 minutes chatting about how irritating it is when patients describe their pus volumes using the empirical system. How much is half a quart anyway? We agreed that everyone should go metric, so we could quantify pus much more easily. Modern medicine, an ever changing science.