This is a list of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions, 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 ( North American spelling; also British spelling in Oxford) or capitalisation (Commonwealth English; all other meanings) is writing a word with its first letter as a capital letter (uppercase letter) and the remaining letters in ...
and the use of
full stop
The full stop ( Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation).
A ...
s are a matter of
style
Style, or styles may refer to:
Film and television
* ''Style'' (2001 film), a Hindi film starring Sharman Joshi, Riya Sen, Sahil Khan and Shilpi Mudgal
* ''Style'' (2002 film), a Tamil drama film
* ''Style'' (2004 film), a Burmese film
* '' ...
. 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 document, such as a Academic publishing#Scholarly paper, paper, book or periodical literature, periodical (or their electronic publishing, electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information ...
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
Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement or maintenance of health via the preventive healthcare, prevention, diagnosis, therapy, treatment, wikt:amelioration, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other disability, physic ...
in
English-speaking
The English-speaking world comprises the 88 countries and territories in which English is an official, administrative, or cultural language. In the early 2000s, between one and two billion people spoke English, making it the largest language ...
regions.
Some of these are obsolete; others remain current.
There is a risk of serious consequences when abbreviations are misread or misinterpreted. In the United Kingdom, all prescriptions should be in English without abbreviation (apart from some units such as mg and mL; micrograms and nanograms should ''not'' be abbreviated).
In the United States, abbreviations which are
deprecated
Deprecation is the discouragement of use of something human-made, such as a term, feature, design, or practice. Typically something is deprecated because it is claimed to be inferior compared to other options available.
Something may be deprec ...
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
A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, Trust (business), trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from fed ...
(ISMP) and the
American Medical Association
The American Medical Association (AMA) is an American professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. This medical association was founded in 1847 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was 271,660 ...
(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 other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalation, injection, smoking, ingestio ...
* Using
apothecary's units
* Using
trailing zero
A trailing zero is any 0 digit that comes after the last nonzero digit in a number string in positional notation. For digits ''before'' the decimal point, the trailing zeros between the decimal point and the last nonzero digit are necessary for c ...
s or not using a
leading zero
A leading zero is any 0 digit that comes before the first nonzero digit in a number string in positional notation.. For example, James Bond's famous identifier, 007, has two leading zeros. Any zeros appearing to the left of the first non-zero dig ...
See also
*
List of medical abbreviations
Abbreviations are used very frequently in medicine. They boost efficiency as long as they are used intelligently. The advantages of brevity should be weighed against the possibilities of obfuscation (making the communication harder for others ...
References
External links
*
{{MedAbbrev
Prescriptions