Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine who had a brother who was a doctor working in the emergency room. One night a woman came in complaining of stomach distress, and the admitting physician asked her standard questions. One of those was, "How often do you have sex?" She said about three times a month. The admitting doctor noted this in the chart and told her to wait. Various times during the night my friend's brother passed by this woman, who appeared to be getting worse by the hour. Finally he went to the doctor who was to be treating the woman and asked about the hold-up. The attending physician said she has a disease that prostitutes get, and I'll get to her eventually. "Why would you say that?" asked my friend's brother. Because of her symptoms and the fact that she has sex three times a day.
"Three times a day?" said my friends brother. "It was three times a month!" "Oh," said the attending, "I'll get her to the operating room immediately." Thus the woman was operated on and appendix removed. Although it is quite possible her life could have been in serious danger, simply because of misreading a chart that should have read as three times a month and was mistaken for three times a day. The disease she had exhibited symptoms that could have been taken as two different diseases, and since the chart seemed to indicate frequent sexual activity, one doctor simply jumped to a conclusion. Yet another example of how important it is that medical staff are all on the same page when it comes to symbols and terminology. Mark Henschel On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 10:32 PM, Pierre Abbat <[email protected]> wrote: > https://www.ismp.org/Tools/errorproneabbreviations.pdf > The top of the list is "µg", which supposedly can be misread as "mg". The > ISMP > recommends the incorrect symbol "mcg". > > For "cc", it correctly recommends "mL". I don't see how "cc" can be > misread as > "u" though. > > There's a "q6PM" for "every day at 6 PM". Why are they using PM instead of > 24- > hour clock? > > Pierre > -- > The Black Garden on the Mountain is not on the Black Mountain. > >
