Why the alphabet soup in discharge summaries is a menace
With the typical summary containing 13 different short forms, GP registrar Dr Anna Coghlan says confusion is inevitable
Dr Anna Coghlan recently exposed the alphabet soup frequently served up in hospital discharge summaries written for GPs.
As a junior doctor and now a GP registrar in Brisbane, she was the lead researcher on a recent study showing that a local hospital’s typical discharge letter had some 13 different abbreviations on average.
The figure was identified after she and two colleagues trawled through 800 discharge summaries issued over a single week, with one example containing 86 short forms.
AusDoc: You found the average discharge summary contained 13 different abbreviations and 17 short forms in total.
