Affiliations: Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems
Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China | Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering
Management, The City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong,
China
Note: [] Corresponding author: Calvin K. L. Or, 8/fl., Department of
Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Haking Wong Building, The
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. Tel.: +852 2859 2587; Fax: +852 2858
6535; E-mail: klor@hku.hk
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Orthographically similar drug names create confusion
errorsand pose a potential threat to medication safety. Enhancing the differing
letters in similar drug names is one possible way to address the problem. OBJECTIVE: This study investigated the effects oftext enhancement
methods(tall man, boldface, larger lowercase, and red lettering withlowercase
as the comparison group) and orthographic similarity (referred to the extent to
which the letters that made up the two names in a pair were similar to each
other) on the differentiation performance of look-alike drug names. METHODS: Sixty individualsfroma university and its
affiliatedhospitalparticipated in the differentiation test in which
theydetermined whether the two drug names in each of the120 confusable name
pairs were the same or different. Outcome measures were response time and
proportion of correct responses. RESULTS: Using larger lowercase and red letteringresulted in
significantly shorter response times. Drug names that were more similar to each
other led to significantly longer response times. Text enhancement and
orthographic similarity did not have impact on proportion of correct responses.
CONCLUSIONS: Our study provides additional support for the use of
text enhancement to emphasize the differences between medicines with names that
look alike.
Keywords: Human factors, drug safety, orthographically similar drug name, textual format, drug name differentiation
