Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Weird Capitalization of Medication Names

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find the answer via search.

Can anyone tell me why some medication names have funny capitalization? I really hate this, as I think it looks unprofessional in a printed note.

Examples: glipiZIDE, traZODone, traMADol

Had a practice ask me about it, and I had to look it up.

Here is an explanation of "TallMan" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_Man_lettering

We had a neurosurgeon go ballistic (of course, NS goes ballistic at many many things) in our hospital eRx (not AC) of course.
As described in the link The taLLman lettering is a medication safety policy promulgated by the FDA

Thank you.

From the folks that it comes up with, I don't get the impression that everyone buys into the 'benefits'.

Of course, I'm used to ballistic - it's what rockets [and rocket scientists/engineers] do.

It looks stupid, I hate it, and I fail to see how it decreases medical errors. Why not use different colors and call them Crayola-Man letters?

Uh, Bert, most of us don't keep crayons in our office.

I stand corrected.

See how well it works. The medications Jon wrote:

Zantac, Prevacid and Carafate would all have been mistaken for Prevacid without the colors.

The new color version of ePrescribe should be out in 6.4.

Note to self - when implementing new practices, bring them boxes of Crayons per Bert and JBS. Tell them that is what experts use.

Note to self:

Make sure they are 64 count.



Make sure you have extra MAs to hold them.



Or John can just deal with it himself, lol.

Actually, I think of myself (secretly) as a red crayon.

Isn't that funny....I always think of you as a red crayon, too.

And Bert, where did you get that photo of me? Wasn't there a recent discussion on the board about uploading pics of people without their permission?

You dear, dear little boys, with all your pretty colored crayons, you are acting out again.

But you do so so cutely. And sweetly.

It is like a nursery cryme in here. Is there a pediatrician behind all this childish silliness?

Or does someone just miss mama?





My best,

Marlene

You aren't supposed to eat them, lol. It clearly says, "John." And he signed a release.

All of this time I thought the tall letters were typographical errors and was correcting them with the spell checker. This is the first I have heard of this. Thanx.

And the sad thing is that while it's an option in the spellchecker to ignore mixed caps, that setting isn't permanent, and you have to change it each time. I've found it's faster just to ignore the word while doing the spell checker. I really hope the spell check is improved in an upcoming version.