When you accepted your pharmacy tech position, did you ever think that you were also being hired as a translator and handwriting specialist?

At least with the growing conversion to electronic prescriptions, you may not have to analyze a doctor’s handwriting as much, but the translation never stops. Before becoming a technician, did you ever look at a prescription and wonder what it says and how the pharmacy knows how to translate it?

That’s how I felt and still felt that way on my first day on the other side of the counter. I asked my pharmacist, “How do you know what these abbreviations mean, and how do you remember them?”

She answered, “Once you do this job for a while, it will become second nature to you.” I thought I would never be able to look at these abbreviations and automatically know what to translate. All in all, she was right. Repetition becomes your best friend in pharmacy, but I wanted to know what these abbreviations were off the top of my head without looking at a prescription or cheat sheet.

I decided to come up with a way of remembering these abbreviations.

The most difficult ones for me to remember were those for the eyes and ears, and I would always get these mixed up. The left eye is OS, the right eye is OD, and both eyes are OU. Not long after the time I was hired as a tech, my mother was diagnosed with cataracts and glaucoma, so she had a few surgeries during that time. I would read her eye drop prescriptions, and that’s when I started thinking outside the box.

Most eye surgeries are usually scheduled as same-day surgeries. It occurred to me that when I would have to translate a prescription for an eye medication, I use the location of the eye on the face and where eyes are repaired.

I already knew that ‘O’ meant ocular, so this is what I came up with: OS=left eye -‘S’ = Same; OD=right eye = ‘D’ = Day; OU=both eyes -‘U’ = Unite since both eyes’ unite’ for us to see. Then my next thought was to find a way to remember the ear abbreviations. I used the ‘A’ to represent ‘audio’; AS= left ear -‘S’ = Soothing (Listening to music soothes me after a busy day at the pharmacy); AD=right ear -‘D’ = Diverse (I listen to all types of music); AU=both ears -‘U’ = Unite, both ears’ unite’ for us to hear.

Here are a few more that I came up with for some of the most common abbreviations:

• AC = before meals –after coffee (I always drink my coffee without food)
• PC = after meals –post-coffee
• DAW = dispense as written –don’t adjust writing
• PRN = as-needed –prescription rarely needed
• HS = bedtime –have with sleep
• BID = twice daily –both in a day
• TID = three times a day –triple in a day
• QID = four times a day –quadruple in a day

I found that associating pharmacy abbreviations with simpler meaning or from personal experience can be great ways to remember these. I hope sharing these can serve as a starting point to remembering pharmacy abbreviations, especially if you’re a newly employed pharmacy tech. I hope you have as much fun coming up with your own as I did with mine!