title: Abbreviations in Swedish Clinical Text--use by three professions.
abstract: A list of 266 abbreviations from dieticians' notes in patient records was used to extract the same abbreviations from patient records written by three professions: dieticians, nurses and physicians. A context analysis of 40 of the abbreviations showed that ambiguous meanings were common. Abbreviations used by dieticians were found to be used by other professions, but not always with the same meaning. This ambiguity of abbreviations might cause misunderstandings and put patient safety at risk.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics, Uppsala university, Uppsala, Sweden.
authors.forename: Elin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Lövestam
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Sumithra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Velupillai
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kvist
mesh_terms: D000004:Abbreviations as Topic; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000145:classification* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D009726:Nurses / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D064686:Nutritionists / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D010820:Physicians / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013548:Sweden; D009626:Terminology as Topic