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Educating staff about prohibited abbreviations

Accreditation Connection, December 5, 2005

At Kernan Hospital in Baltimore, Quality Training and Development Manager Donna Raimondi, RN, MS, used color, creativity, and every line of sight available to spread the word about the do-not-use abbreviations.

"We took the list of prohibited abbreviations and put it on hot pink paper, laminated it, and put it on all the charts, so whenever you worked on a chart, you saw the list," says Raimondi. "We also took [copies of the list] and hung them up all over the hospital."

Raimondi says the hospital also made buttons that were handed out during a recent patient safety fair. The buttons had the universal "No" symbol (think of a no smoking sign or the symbol from Ghostbusters ) with the hospital's top four most commonly used prohibited abbreviations.

"In a grayish blue we wrote 'Stop,' and in red were written the four biggest problem abbreviations we have, which are CC, SQ, QD, and QOD," Raimondi says.

After the fair, Raimondi and others handed out the buttons as reminders for staff. They left additional buttons in strategic locations to subtly reinforce the rule.

"We put a bunch in a bowl in the physicians' lounge, where [the physicians] work on incomplete reports," says Raimondi.

They also included the list in a pocket guide that they gave to staff.

When a physician is found using a prohibited abbreviation, the hospital sends him or her a letter explaining the policy.

"They get a letter saying they used a dangerous abbreviation, and that letter is [carbon-copied] to credentialing," says Raimondi.

Adapted from the December 2005 issue of Briefings on Patient Safety.

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