Outpatient

How to spell outpatient

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce outpatient

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does outpatient mean?

1. nounA person who receives medical treatment at a hospital or clinic without being admitted to stay overnight.
2. adjectiveRelating to medical care given to people who are not admitted to stay overnight.

Outpatient in a sentence

• noun

  As an outpatient, she returned home the same afternoon as her scan.

• adjective

  The procedure is now done in the outpatient department instead of the main ward.

• noun

  The surgeon treated him as an outpatient rather than admitting him to a ward.

• adjective

  Physiotherapy is offered on an outpatient basis twice a week.

Where does outpatient come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a compound built from the everyday adverb 'out' and the noun 'patient'. The 'patient' part traces back to the Latin verb pati, meaning 'to suffer' or 'to endure', whose present participle patiens described someone who bears or endures something. By way of Old French, the word entered English in the late 1300s for a person under medical care, the one who endures the illness and the treatment. The prefix 'out' was attached in the nineteenth century, as hospitals began distinguishing those who came in for treatment and went home from those who stayed overnight. The contrast term 'inpatient' was coined the same way, and the spelling stays simple precisely because both halves are familiar English words joined without any change.

How the word is built

• out- (outside, not staying)
• patient (one receiving treatment, from Latin patiens 'enduring, suffering')