ROCKVILLE, Md.-A medication-error watchdog group has a prescription for doctors with hopeless penmanship.
First and foremost, say the reformers, stop all that chicken scratch. The National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting and Prevention would have physicians computerize all orders and print them out.
The council envisions doctors using office computers, such as those for billing. Another proposal is use of a hand-held device in which prescriptions or orders would be entered and printed. The 14-group council, set up by the U.S. Pharmacopeia here, says illegible handwriting accounted for many of the 2,100 medication-error reports USP collected over four years.
Other recommendations the council issued to “dramatically reduce the potential for harmful medication errors” include spelling out “dangerous abbreviations,” such as mg, U, QD, QOD, SC or SQ, TIW, D/C, HS, cc, and AU, AS, and AD. The council also would avoid vague terms like “take as directed.”
It exhorted doctors to use the metric system except for therapies that use standard units such as insulin, include age and weight (particularly for pediatric and geriatric patients), and always use a leading zero before a decimal of less than one (as in 0.44), but never a trailing zero (as in 1.0). Prescriptions should include drug name, exact metric weight or concentration, dosage form, and a notation of purpose.
Members of the council, formed a year ago, include the AMA, American Hospital Association, PhRMA, AARP, JCAHO, FDA, and American Nurses Association. -Thomas Novembre
ROCKVILLE, Md.-A medication-error watchdog group has a prescription for doctors with hopeless penmanship.
