title: Tallman lettering as a strategy for differentiation in look-alike, sound-alike drug names: the role of familiarity in differentiating drug doppelgangers.
abstract: Tallman lettering, capitalizing the dissimilar portions of easily confused drug names, is one strategy for reducing medication errors. We assessed the efficacy of Tallman lettering in a visually complex environment using a change detection method with healthcare providers and laypeople. In addition, the effect of familiarity with the drug name was assessed using a subset of responses collected from healthcare providers. Both healthcare providers and laypeople detected changes in confusable pairs of drug names more often (P < 0.0001) and more quickly (P < 0.05) when changes were presented in Tallman lettering, though the benefits were more pronounced for healthcare providers (p < 0.05). Familiarity with both drug names in a confusable pair mitigated the benefit of Tallman lettering. Results are discussed in terms of bottom-up and top-down attentional systems for processing of information in the context of the varied healthcare environments.
authors.affiliation: School of Packaging, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
authors.forename: Carly
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: DeHenau
authors.affiliation: Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Group, Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
authors.forename: Mark W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Becker
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, USA.
authors.forename: Nora M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Bello
authors.affiliation: School of Packaging, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA.
authors.forename: Sichang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: School of Packaging, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. Electronic address: bixlaura@msu.edu.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bix
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004348:Drug Labeling / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D005260:Female; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008508:Medication Errors / Q000517:prevention & control; D008875:Middle Aged; D010700:Phonetics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Drug labeling; Look-alike sound-alike drug names; Medication error; Name differentiation; Tallman lettering; Text differentiation