Sunday, May 30, 2010

Abbreviations

I was chatting with one of the nurses the other day and we got to talking about medical abbreviations. Medical terminology is crazy enough, but then we have to throw in things like: BOM, BRBPR, SOB, PFO, COPD, NAD, VSS, N/V/D, QD, QOD, QHS, QAC, BID, QID, PO, NPO, OU, D/C, Rx, Sx, Dx, C/O, CC, R/O, CXR, PA, CAD, PVD, PUD, PID, BM, LGSIL, PE, PCOS, HTN, DM, PERRLA, MI, CVA, TIA, SVT, AFIB, DVT, Hx, PROM, DCIS, AVM, B/L, BS, DNR, LVH, MS, MVP, UTI and VUR. Those are just a few, and of course some of them have multiple meanings.

My favorite ones are the ones with a line over the top. I still use a, p, d, s, and c with a line over them (ā).

3 comments:

shelly said...

Kathlyne, when and where di dyou learn all the medical coding and technoology you needed? I never took a shorthand course or anything. did you?

shelly said...

I am not that good deciphering all the codes on charts. Did you have a course for this in school along the way somewhere?

k. said...

I just picked it up as I went along. We never had a course on it. So many of them have multiple meanings, but you can usually figure it out from the context. There is a long list on wikipedia that you can look at if you want to familiarize yourself with them.