Lives risked as GPs fail at hospital speak

Lives could be at risk with new research showing general practitioners don't understand many of the abbreviations used by hospitals.

The research, published in the Medical Journal of Australia on Monday, showed some of the most common abbreviations used in electronic hospital discharge letters were misinterpreted by almost 50 per cent of GPs.

Researchers picked out the top abbreviations used at Sydney's Nepean Hospital and used them to create a questionnaire which was sent out to 240 GPs in the local area.

Six were misinterpreted by more than a quarter of the 132 GPs who responded to the survey.

The results showed "poor" understanding among GPs of abbreviations, researchers Mark Chemali, Emily Hibbert and Adrian Sheen said.

"Our findings highlight an area that may contribute to patient morbidity or mortality because of miscommunication between health care practitioners," they said.

The results showed one quarter of GPs were unaware that B/G stood for "background" while some failed to interpret BP as blood pressure or ED as emergency department.

The report says it would be impractical to ban the use of abbreviations and suggests either creating a list of approved abbreviations that could be distributed to GPs or using computer software to automatically fill in any abbreviations.

COMMON ABBREVIATIONS THAT ELUDED DOCTORS

* SNT (soft, non-tender) - 62 got it wrong

* EST (exercise stress testing) - 44 got it wrong

* NKDA (no known drug allergies) - 43 got it wrong

* B/G (background) - 31 got it wrong

* BP (blood pressure) - three got it wrong

* HR (heart rate) - two got it wrong

(From a survey of 132 GPs)