The Health Quality Council of Alberta (HQCA) recently launched a new website, abbreviations.hqca.ca, specifically targeting the use of abbreviations in healthcare. Abbreviation use is a risk to patient safety – abbreviations and acronyms can mean different things to different people or can be misread, potentially resulting in patient harm.
The new website identifies why abbreviations are a problem and provides resources to make changes at the team and organization level. It provides a practical step-by-step guide for implementing an abbreviation initiative and includes case studies and downloadable resources that will help reduce abbreviation use in many different care settings.
