Prescription Bottle Shorthand Decoder

Disclaimer.  I am not a licensed health practitioner.  This is just another post on knowledge and understanding you might wish to acquire in advance of a disaster in case no higher care is available.  As long as our society is functioning, you should leave anything more substantial than applying a Band-Aid to the professionals.  No medication, including those available over the counter, should be taken without consulting a physician.  Information shared here is for educational and entertainment purposes only.  It is not medical advice nor a substitute for licensed medical care.


No, this is not a post about learning how to write prescription bottle instructions.  Rather, it's a handy reference for interpreting what those abbreviations mean.  It's meant for those instances where you saved a bottle of whatever in case you needed it again in the future, instead of turning it in to the authorities for proper disposal.  And in case your instructions were written in code which was interpreted for you at the time, but which code you have since forgotten. 

I have to admit, I have never seen or even heard of many of these abbreviations, but I figure there are some areas of the country where their use might be more common, or maybe among some doctors they're more generally used.  Regardless, Dr. Steve thought it was important for us to have them, so I guess there's a reason.  Most all of these abbreviations come from Latin, and they are used around the world.  Theoretically, you could pick up a prescription bottle from Brazil, Bahrain, or Boston and be able to understand the written instructions.  Not sure I'd plan on that myself, but that's the idea anyway.

Prescription Bottle Abbreviations
Gtt	Drop	t	teaspoon or 5 ml
T	Tablespoon or 15 ml	Oz	Ounce or 30 ml
Route of administration
PO	Per oral—mouth	IM	Intramuscular
SQ	Subcutaneous	PR	Rectal
SL	Sublingual	IV	Intravenous
ID	Intradermal	TAA	To affected area
OD	Right eye	OS	Left eye
OU	Both eyes
Schedule
QOD	Once every other day	QD	Once per day
BID	2x per day	Q4	Every 4 hours
TID	3x per day	Q6	Every 6 hours
QID	4x per day	Q4-6	Every 4-6 hours
QH	Every hour	Q8	Every 8 hours
AC	Before meals	PC	After meals
HS	Before bed	CC	With food
Ad. Lib.	As desired or needed	NPO	Nothing by mouth
PRN	As needed	Dieb. Alt.	Every other day

 

 16 october 2019