Lab Rat or Button Monkey? » medical risk http://blog.biomedicalscience.org.uk Under the white coat Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:16:56 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Medical abbreviations ‘pose risk’ http://blog.biomedicalscience.org.uk/2008/03/21/medical-abbreviations-pose-risk/ http://blog.biomedicalscience.org.uk/2008/03/21/medical-abbreviations-pose-risk/#comments Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:46:59 +0000 dapo http://blog.biomedicalscience.org.uk/2008/03/21/medical-abbreviations-pose-risk/ I saw this page on the BBC Health page.  It suggests that the use of abbreviations should be potentially phased out as it has contributed to 5% of errors in an American study, some of which were fatal.  An example quoted in the article concerns the dose of insulin given to a patient.  The notes had 6IU, which was interpretated as 61 units and not the actual 6 International Units.  It does make for some interesting reading.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7171453.stm

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