Abbreviation

Abbreviation

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Usually, but not always, it consists of a letter or group of letters taken from the word or phrase...

s are used very frequently in medicine. They boost efficiency as long as they are used intelligently. The advantages of brevity should be weighed against the possibilities of crypticness (making the communication harder for others to understand) and ambiguity (having more than one possible interpretation). Certain medical abbreviations are avoided to prevent mistakes, according to best practice

Best practice

A best practice is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark...

s (and in some cases regulatory requirements); these are flagged in the list of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions.

Periods (stops)

Period

Full stop

A full stop is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of sentences. In American English, the term used for this punctuation is period. In the 21st century, it is often also called a dot by young people...

s (stops) are often used in styling abbreviations. Prevalent practice in medicine today is often to forego them as unnecessary.

• Example:
  • Less common: The diagnosis was C.O.P.D.
        [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease]
  • More common: The diagnosis was COPD.

Plurals

The prevalent way to represent plurals for medical acronyms is simply to affix a lowercase s (no apostrophe

Apostrophe

The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...

).

• Example: one-two OCP, two OCPs  [oral contraceptive pills].

Possessives

Possessive forms are not often needed, but can be formed using apostrophe + s. Often the writer can also recast the sentence to avoid it.

• Example:
  • BP's effect on risk of MI is multifaceted.
  • The effect of BP on MI risk is multifaceted.

Conventions of this series

• This series of lists omits periods from acronyms and initialisms.
• It uses periods for certain abbreviations that traditionally often have them (mostly older Latin/Neo-Latin abbreviations). For example, both bid and b.i.d. may be found in the list.
• It generally uses the singular form of an abbreviation (not the plural) as the headword
  Headword
  A headword, head word, lemma, or sometimes catchword is the word under which a set of related dictionary or encyclopaedia entries appear. The headword is used to locate the entry, and dictates its alphabetical position...
  
  .
• This list uses significant capitalization for headwords (the abbreviations) and their expansions.

See also

• List of abbreviations used in medical prescriptions
• List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes
• Medical dictionary
  Medical dictionary
  A medical dictionary is a lexicon for words used in medicine. The three major English language medical dictionaries are Stedman's, Taber's, and Dorland's Pocket Medical Dictionary. Other significant medical dictionaries are distributed by Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of medical and...
  
  
• Medical slang
  Medical slang
  Medical slang is a form of slang used by doctors, nurses, paramedics and other hospital or medical staff. Its central aspect is the use of facetious but impressive-sounding acronyms and invented terminology to describe patients, co-workers or tricky situations. It serves, in other words, as a...
  
  
• Abbreviation#Style conventions in English
• Acronym and initialism#Orthographic styling