If the doctor’s prescription reads like Greek and Latin to you, it isn’t far from the truth. A lot of your prescription is actually in Latin! It is very important that you understand and follow the doctor’s instructions perfectly as it is key to your treatment. In this post, we try to decode some of the commonly used terms and abbreviations from a prescription:
Your doctor will first start by writing your name, age, sex and date at the top of the prescription followed by the symptoms. He/she will then write about your symptoms and possible diagnosis.
Your symptoms will usually be written under an abbreviation C/O meaning ‘complains of’, followed by H/O meaning ‘history of’ and then the possible diagnosis demarcated by a small triangle with a superscript(s). If your doctor deems that you might require a few tests to ascertain the exact problem, he will mention the tests after the symptoms section.
Your medication:
The next part of your prescription will contain the word Rx , an abbreviation for ‘Receive thou’ in Latin meaning ‘take’ . After which the doctor will write about the medication you must take.
A prescription can be divided into 4 parts. The first part, is the type of medication—either tablet , abbreviated as ‘T’or ‘Tab’, capsule abbreviated as ‘Cap‘ or syrup abbreviated as ‘Syr’.
The second part is the name of the medication. In this case doctors may use the generic name of the medicine or the commercial name. For example, ‘Paracetamol’ is the generic name for medicines such as ‘Crocin’ etc.
The third part of the prescription is the concentration of the medication. Since medicines are made at different concentrations, it is important for the doctor to specify the exact concentration. This is usually a number followed by an abbreviation for the amount like mg, ml, tbsp or gm.
The next part of the prescription is the number of times you have to take the medicines in a day – od (once a day), bd or bid (twice a day, 12 hour gap), tid (thrice a day, with a 8-hour gap), qid (four times in a day with a 6-hour gap).