Volume 22, Issue 4
Medication Safety Alert! February 23, 2017
In this week's issue:
- DTaP, LAIV, MCV4, PPSV23, HZV, 9vHPV... Alphabet Soup Vaccine Abbreviations and Acronyms Lead to Errors
- Tresiba U-200 won't allow odd number dosing of insulin units
- Why color coding injectables by drug class can be dangerous
Featured article
Problem: Advances in immunization technology and knowledge of diseases have led to an ongoing stream of new vaccines. To date, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved 48 different single and combination vaccines that target 24 vaccine-preventable diseases. The large number of vaccines and long, often complex, nonproprietary (generic) vaccine names have spurred the use of abbreviations, most often in the form of acronyms that attempt to describe the vaccine components.
ACIP standard vaccine abbreviations and acronyms
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)...