It might be of interest to all that the airport temperature and dew point at
airports here in the US are given to all pilots in Celsius only. So all US
pilots understand Celsius because they use it on a daily basis.
On another note, I came across an Ethiopian Immigrant today who had no idea
what Celsius was, he knew Centigrade but had never come across Celsius.
Mike Payne
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Trusten, R.Ph." <[email protected]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, 18 January 2009 21:39
Subject: [USMA:42356] Re: Is there any literature on metrication in the US
aimed at immigrants?
Pierre, in the absence of real-world U.S. metrication, it's hard to
suggest
people to use metric here, even in the healthcare world itself. One of the
doctors in my hospital orders antipyretic (anti-fever) medication with the
parameter "if temperature over 38." Not sure if he is aware that there
isn't a
single Celsius fever thermometer in the house, or, if switchable, I'm sure
they
are not switched over to Celsius because all the charting is done in
Fahrenheit.
I've had nurses calling me to ask what "38" means, and I have no choice
but to
commit metrication sin and back-convert for them. Even physicians who were
trained abroad--which means metric countries, of course--end up following
my
pet peeve of ordering oral liquid medications in teaspoon volumes instead
of
milliliter volumes, but all orders for such are expressed on the record as
milliliters. As a U.S. medical tool, the teaspoon should go the way of the
iron
lung.
Metrication is a truly national, societal process. Clinical temperature
measurement is a good example. To TRULY change to Celsius fever
measurement in
a U.S. institution, you need ALL of the following:
1)Celsius orders
2)Celsius thermometers
3)Celsius-educated staff
Still, I do think that the issue of how immigrants to the U.S. feel about
metric
has scarcely been explored. Thank you for suggesting it. I'll look into
it.
Paul T.
However, at every opportunity, I have spearheaded the sole use of metric
at my
facility
Quoting Pierre Abbat <[email protected]>:
The church yesterday held a health screening where they checked our
cholesterol, glucose, and other signs. After getting my blood glucose
checked, I went to another station which had a digital scale
(pèse-personne).
I stepped on it and it showed my mass in pounds, which is meaningless to
me,
since I have always thought of it in kilograms since I was 36 kg when
they
introduced metric in school. The nurse then tried to divide by 2.2 in her
head and got it wrong. I volunteered my calculator, which has the
conversion
built in; she entered the numbers and got 0, because it's reverse Polish,
which she's unfamiliar with.
After everyone else had been weighed, I turned the scale over, flipped
the
switch, stepped on it, and read 56.8, which agrees with my mass measured
at
home, considering that I was wearing clothes. I know she is familiar with
kilograms because (1) she's an immigrant; (2) I overheard her explaining
to
the previous patient that you divide your mass in kilograms by the square
of
your height in meters; and (3) I talked with her after flipping the
switch.
It appears that the immigrants try to conform to what they think is the
way
we
do it. Is there any literature aimed at people who come here already
knowing
metric, but haven't lived through the introduction of metric in the
1970s,
empowering them to push Americans to metricate?
Pierre
--
Paul Trusten, R.Ph.
Public Relations Director
U.S. Metric Association (USMA), Inc.
www.metric.org
3609 Caldera Boulevard, Apartment 122
Midland TX 79707-2872 US
+1(432)528-7724
mailto:[email protected]
