This is a list of abbreviations used in

medical prescription A prescription, often abbreviated or Rx, is a formal communication from a physician or other registered health-care professional to a pharmacist, authorizing them to dispense a specific prescription drug for a specific patient. Historica ...

s, including hospital orders (the patient-directed part of which is referred to as sig codes). This list does not include abbreviations for pharmaceuticals or drug name suffixes such as CD, CR, ER, XT (See ' for those).

Capitalisation Capitalization (American English) or capitalisation (British English) is writing a word with its first letter as a capital letter (uppercase letter) and the remaining letters in lower case, in writing systems with a case distinction. The term a ...

and the use of

full stops The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation ...

are a matter of

style Style is a manner of doing or presenting things and may refer to: * Architectural style, the features that make a building or structure historically identifiable * Design, the process of creating something * Fashion, a prevailing mode of clothing ...

. In the list, abbreviations in English are capitalized whereas those in Latin are not. These abbreviations can be verified in

reference work A reference work is a work, such as a paper, book or periodical (or their electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information is intended to be found quickly when needed. Such works are usually ''referred'' to ...

s, both recent and older. Some of those works (such as Wyeth 1901) are so comprehensive that their entire content cannot be reproduced here. This list includes all that are frequently encountered in today's health care in

English-speaking Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the '' Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest langua ...

regions. Some of these are obsolete; others remain current. Abbreviations which are

deprecated In several fields, especially computing, deprecation is the discouragement of use of some terminology, feature, design, or practice, typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered efficient or safe, without completely removing ...

by the

Joint Commission The Joint Commission is a United States-based nonprofit tax-exempt 501(c) organization that accredits more than 22,000 US health care organizations and programs. The international branch accredits medical services from around the world. A majori ...

are marked in red. Those abbreviations which are deprecated by other organizations, such as the

Institute for Safe Medication Practices The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) is an American 501(c)(3) organization focusing on the prevention of medication errors and promoting safe medication practices. It is affiliated with the ECRI Institute ECRI (originally founded ...

(ISMP) and the

American Medical Association The American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. Founded in 1847, it is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was approximately 240,000 in 2016. The AMA's sta ...

(AMA), are marked in orange. The Joint Commission is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization which offers

accreditation Accreditation is the independent, third-party evaluation of a conformity assessment body (such as certification body, inspection body or laboratory) against recognised standards, conveying formal demonstration of its impartiality and competence to ...

to hospitals and other health care organizations in the United States. While their recommendations are not binding on U.S. physicians, they are required of organizations who wish accreditation by the Joint Commission. __TOC__

Table

Currently discouraged practices

* Abbreviating names of

drugs A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalat ...

* Using apothecary's units * Using

trailing zero In mathematics, trailing zeros are a sequence of 0 in the decimal representation (or more generally, in any positional representation) of a number, after which no other digits follow. Trailing zeros to the right of a decimal point, as in 12.340 ...

s or not using a leading zero

References

External links

* {{MedAbbrev Prescriptions

Table

Currently discouraged practices

See also

References

External links