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The influence of 'Tall Man' lettering on errors of visual perception in the recognition of written drug names
journal contribution
posted on 2014-07-30, 13:45 authored by Iain T. Darker, David Gerret, Ruth Filik, Kevin Purdy, Alastair GaleVisual errors in the perception of written drug names can reflect orthographic similarity amongst certain names. Drug names are typically printed in lowercase text. ‘Tall Man’ lettering, the capitalisation of the portions that differ amongst orthographically similar drug names, is employed in the field of medication labelling and prescribing to reduce medication errors by highlighting the area most likely to prevent confusion. The influence of textual format on visual drug name perception was tested amongst healthcare professionals (n = 133) using the Reicher-Wheeler task. Relative to lowercase text, Tall Man lettering improved accuracy in drug name perception. However, an equivalent improvement in accuracy was obtained using entirely uppercase text. Thus, character size may be a key determinant of perceptual accuracy for Tall Man lettering. Specific considerations for the manner in which Tall Man lettering might be best formatted and implemented in practice to reduce medication errors are discussed.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Computer Science
Published in
ERGONOMICSVolume
54Issue
1Pages
21 - 33 (13)Citation
DARKER, I.T. ... et al, 2011. The influence of 'Tall Man' lettering on errors of visual perception in the recognition of written drug names. Ergonomics, 54 (1), pp. 21 - 33.Publisher
© Taylor and FrancisVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publication date
2011Notes
This article is closed access.ISSN
0014-0139Publisher version
Language
- en