Tall Man lettering

Tall man lettering (tall-man lettering or tallman lettering) is the practice of writing part of a drug's name in upper case letters to help distinguish sound-alike, look-alike drugs from one another in order to avoid medication errors.[1][2] For example, in tall man lettering, "prednisone" and "prednisolone" should be written "predniSONE" and "predniSOLONE", respectively. The Office of Generic Drugs of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) encourages manufacturers to use tall man lettering labels to visually differentiate their drugs' names,[1] and a number of hospitals, clinics, and health care systems use tall man lettering in their computerized order entry, automated dispensing machines, medication admission records, prescription labels, and drug product labels.[3]

Examples

The FDA and Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) published a list [4] of recommended Tall-Man Letters for look-alike drugs which includes, but is not limited to:

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Name Differentiation Project, website browsed 2007/12/20"
  2. ↑ "Institute for Safe Medication Practices FAQ #5, browsed 2007/12/20"
  3. ↑ Examples: "University of Utah Health Care Pharmacy Alert #191" dated 2006/12/04, browsed 2007/12/20; Fraser Health 'Doctors in the Know' newsletter dated September, 2006, browsed 2007/12/20; Johns Hopkins Hospital "Pharmacy and Therapeutics Newsletter" dated July 2005, archived 2007/3/15.
  4. ↑ "FDA and ISMP Lists of Look-Alike Drug Names with Recommended Tall Man Letters" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-06-16.

External links


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