Goodbye to U: Safety campaign nixes abbreviations

Improved patient safety is the goal of efforts to rid the medical world of truncated terms that are often misunderstood.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. July 17, 2006.

Washington -- The Food and Drug Administration is taking aim at "U." Actually, the agency is targeting this often-misread abbreviation as well as a long list of others.

It's all part of a nationwide education campaign launched June 14 by the FDA in conjunction with the Institute for Safe Medication Practices.

The initiative is directed at physicians, pharmacists, pharmaceutical companies, FDA staff and medical journals with the intent of pointing out the error of their ways. The message: Don't abbreviate crucial medical terms -- spell them out in their entirety. The reason: The use of shorthand terms is a common and preventable source of medication mix-ups and mistakes.

"Some abbreviations, symbols and dose designations are frequently misinterpreted and lead to mistakes that result in patient harm," said FDA Acting Commissioner Andrew C. von Eschenbach, MD.

In its 1999 review, To Err is Human, the Institute of Medicine reported that more than 7,000 deaths a year are due to medication errors. Mistakes can occur anywhere in the system, beginning with a name that is too similar to that of an existing drug and ending with prescribing and administration blunders, said Carol Holquist, director of the division of medication errors and technical support at the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "Everyone has a role in preventing errors," she said.

The AMA also has taken up the cause of patient safety. It has adopted policy encouraging accuracy and clarity in all prescriptions and has discouraged the use of abbreviations.