You are probably aware that "gomer" is a technical medical term for an elderly human with too many chronic medical problems, usually including cognitive decline. The female term is "gomere."
It's an acronym for "Get Out of My Emergency Room." In the classic black-humor but realistic medical memoir of an internal medicine internship (House of God - which was Mass General I believe but sort-of named after NYC's Mount Sinai), the phrase "Gomers go to ground" was popularized.
The idea is that gomers always find a way to fall - while walking, falling off a gurney, falling out of bed, having mini-strokes or heart attacks, falling off the toilet, falling out of wheelchairs, etc. Victims of gravity and decay.
If you read the book you will never want to get near a famous teaching hospital. There is plenty of sex with nurses, chaplains, and social workers, etc in it, which is sort-of an intern ritual and the gals are all hot for fresh young interns. At Amazon:
The House of God is a mesmerizing and provocative journey that takes us into the lives of Roy Basch and five of his fellow interns at the most renowned teaching hospital in the country. Young Dr. Basch and his irreverant confidant, known only as the Fat Man, will learn not only how to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings. Samuel Shem has done what few in American medicine have dared to do - create an unvarnished, unglorified, and amazingly forthright portrait revealing the depth of caring, pain, pathos, and tragedy felt by all who spend their lives treating patients and stand at the crossroads between science and humanity. With over two million copies sold worldwide, The House of God has been hailed as one of the most important medical novels of the twentieth century and compared to Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith for its poignant portrayal of the education of American doctors.
Thus I found it amusing to see this sign in La Gomera last month (I will post my pics of La Gomera and Tenerife when I get to it):
Correction: Reader is right I think. Boston's Beth Israel.
