This is another word that was used in the training I was in today.

Postvention is being used by this trainer to describe the process of debriefing after a crisis.

What do you think of this word? Anyone else ever heard it?

Post: after + vent: wind. The trainer farted?

Well, as PREvention is taking care prior to an event to stop its occurence possibly the trainer believed that POSTvention is taking action after the event has happened.

It strikes me as bit bit thin, though. I don't believe that prevention derives from the combination of "pre" and "vention".

Now this is interesting.

Richard says, "I don't believe that prevention derives from the combination of "pre" and "vention".

Actually, and to my surprise, it does: prevent Latin præ "before" + venire "to come". It originally meant "to take prior action in anticipation of" (and only later came to mean "to take prior action that hinders"). Thus postvent would be a perfectly sensible analog to the original meaning of prevent.

Surprised the heck out of me. Not at all what I'd have anticipated.

I have heard the term in nursing when talking about mass trauma situations...though rarely. I've always considered it jargon, but I guess not.

quote:

Surprised the heck out of me. Not at all what I'd have anticipated.

Well, I suppose if I'd taken the trouble to cast my mind back half a century to Mr Chadwick's Latin classes I'd have remembered that "Venir" meant "to go" and could have worked that out for myself. The trouble was that I was trying to find an English word "vention".

quote:

Originally posted by wordnerd:
It originally meant "to take prior action in anticipation of" (and only later came to mean "to take prior action that hinders"). prevent.

How far back do you want to go? For instance, check out Cranmer's 1549 Book of Common Prayer...in the post-Communion collects there appears: "Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings with thy most gracious favour, and further us with thy continual help; that in all our works, begun, continued, and ended in thee, we may glorify thy holy Name, and finally by thy mercy obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
There's no suggestion in prevent that people be stopped from doing something...just a supplication that God go before them.
Incidentally, that looks like an Oxford comma after continued. If so, it's been around quite a long time.