ArticleDrug safety2014
A comparison of the effects of different typographical methods on the recognizability of printed drug names.
Article in Drug safety, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A systematic literature review of LASA error interventions.British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2021Pooled it
- A systematic literature review on strategies to avoid look-alike errors of labels.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2018Pooled it
- Effects of tall man lettering on the visual behaviour of critical care nurses while identifying syringe drug labels: a randomised in situ simulation.BMJ quality & safety · 2023Article
- Preventing dispensing errors by alerting for drug confusions in the pharmacy information system-A survey of users.PloS one · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundTall Man lettering is a text enhancement method currently recommended by various organizations for distinguishing look-alike drug names to prevent medication errors. However, the literature has suggested that other typographic styles may be more effective.
objectiveOur objective was to examine the effects of text enhancements and orthographic similarity on the accuracy of look-alike drug name differentiation.
methodsWe conducted two experiments that were based on a two-way, repeated-measures design with text enhancement (Tall Man, boldface, boldface plus Tall Man, colored text [red] and contrast with lowercase as a 'no text enhancement' control) and orthographic similarity (low, medium, and high) as factors. Engineering students without a pharmacy background in experiment 1 (n = 40) and student pharmacists in experiment 2 (n = 40) participated in a computer-based drug name differentiation task in which they determined whether the two drug names in each of the 336 name pairs were the same or different. Only the data generated from the pairs in which the two names were different were used in the analysis. The differentiation accuracy was measured as the proportion of correct responses.
resultsIn both experiments, all five text enhancements significantly improved accuracy compared with the lowercase condition; and boldface plus Tall Man and color significantly outperformed Tall Man lettering. A high degree of orthographic similarity yielded the least accuracy, followed by medium and low degrees.
conclusionsHighlighting the differing portions of confusing drug name pairs using enhanced text clearly renders differentiation easier, although Tall Man lettering may not be the most effective choice for this method.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.