Meaning & use
inpatient
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Meaning
nouncountable
A person who is officially admitted to a hospital and stays there overnight or longer for treatment or tests.
Grammar: Countable: use a/an or the, and the plural inpatients. It contrasts with outpatient, someone treated at the hospital but not staying overnight.
Patterns
- an inpatient at a hospital
- be admitted as an inpatient
- inpatient care/treatment
After the accident, she was an inpatient at the city hospital for two weeks.
The survey compared the cost of inpatient care with treatment given at home.
He was admitted as an inpatient so the doctors could monitor his heart overnight.
Word forms
| plural | inpatients |
|---|
Common combinations
- inpatient care
- Inpatient care usually costs more than a short visit to a clinic.
- an inpatient at a hospital
- My grandfather is an inpatient at the hospital until Friday.
- be admitted as an inpatient
- She was admitted as an inpatient after the operation.
- inpatient treatment
- The clinic offers inpatient treatment for people with serious addictions.
- inpatient department
- You need to go to the inpatient department on the second floor.
Synonyms and how they differ
- patient
- More general: a patient may be an inpatient or an outpatient, so use inpatient when you mean someone who stays in the hospital.
- resident
- Used mainly in American English for a doctor in training, not for someone receiving care; avoid it for a hospital patient.
Opposites
Word family
- patient noun
- A person receiving medical care, whether staying in hospital or not.
- outpatient noun
- A patient who comes to hospital for treatment but does not stay overnight.
Commonly confused: inpatient or impatient? inpatient or in-patient?
inpatient vs impatient
Impatient is an adjective meaning unable to wait calmly, and it sounds almost the same in fast speech. Inpatient is a noun for someone staying in a hospital; the first syllable is 'in', not 'im'.
inpatient vs in-patient
The hyphenated spelling in-patient is also used, especially in British English, but the single word inpatient is now more common.
Practice
After the surgery, Mr. Lee was ______ at the hospital for three days.
Choose one answer.
The noun inpatient needs a determiner, so 'an inpatient' is correct. 'Inpatient' alone lacks a determiner, 'outpatient' means someone who does not stay overnight, and 'impatient' is an adjective meaning unable to wait.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “inpatient”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.