Abbreviations

There are approximately  10 abbreviations that the Joint Commission calls DO NOT USE abbreviations.  They are abbreviations that can be confusing even within the medical community and result in over doses, under doses, and/or medication administered to the wrong body part.
However, such as this week there are a number of other abbreviations that should ALWAYS be written out and many hospitals require it.

mcg-- microgram. 

The Joint Commission does not officially list this on their abbreviation list as we've gone to more computer generated writing and the latin or greek letter (mu) is not an easily accessible keyboard option. However when things are handwritten, in orders especially, this can be confused for milligrams resulting in a dose that can be over 1000x what the order was written for.

There was a recent news piece about a child in Boston who received a deadly amount of his cancer drug because of a mistake like the one described above.  It is always best to be in the habit of fully writing out the word microgram and NEVER using the abbreviation.

Best practice is to write it out EVERY time which makes it harder to misinterpret. The FDA as well as other regulatory agencies have determined this to be best practice even in non-human medical areas including veterinary medicine.


Example:
Forteo 20mcg SQ QD -- Forteo 20 micrograms sub-q every day

Drug X to be administered at 50 micrograms/kg/day