Secondaries and Using Abbreviations

[St-Denis_Medical_Scribe]

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Hello all,
I hope everyone is doing well with secondaries. I need someone to help provide some clarity or another perspective. Basically, one of my friends who already applied told me that it was okay to use abbreviations for school-specific offerings as long as you can find the abbreviation they used on the school's official website. The thinking that my friend gave me was that this school should know what organizations/cirricula/etc they have, and that your discussion of the offering after you mention the acronym should be enough in connecting the dots to indicate what it is.

But today, someone new was reading over a secondary I wrote and told me that I shouldn't be using abbreviations? I dont know who to listen to, but I really hope using abbreviations is alright, especially if the school also abbreviates that cirriculum/organization/opportunity as evident on their website. Doesnt help that I've already sent in a bunch of secondaries with some heavily relying on abbreviations of things....

For example) On the school's official website, they have something called the "Interprofessional Community Clinic" where they use the acronym "ICC". For schools using character counts instead of word counts, using ICC (3 characters) as opposed to Interprofessional Community Clinic (30+ characters).

 

[Mr.Smile12]

This topic is common when discussing research protocols. Journalistic courtesy says write it out once.

Using Abbreviations in Academic Writing | Cambridge Proofreading

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[LizzyM]

Consider that some application readers may not be familiar with every aspect of the curriculum and website. Don't slow down or piss off your application reader -- those are the people who can recommend you for interview.

 

[Doctor-S]

Hello all,
I hope everyone is doing well with secondaries. I need someone to help provide some clarity or another perspective. Basically, one of my friends who already applied told me that it was okay to use abbreviations for school-specific offerings as long as you can find the abbreviation they used on the school's official website. The thinking that my friend gave me was that this school should know what organizations/cirricula/etc they have, and that your discussion of the offering after you mention the acronym should be enough in connecting the dots to indicate what it is.

But today, someone new was reading over a secondary I wrote and told me that I shouldn't be using abbreviations? I dont know who to listen to, but I really hope using abbreviations is alright, especially if the school also abbreviates that cirriculum/organization/opportunity as evident on their website. Doesnt help that I've already sent in a bunch of secondaries with some heavily relying on abbreviations of things....

For example) On the school's official website, they have something called the "Interprofessional Community Clinic" where they use the acronym "ICC". For schools using character counts instead of word counts, using ICC (3 characters) as opposed to Interprofessional Community Clinic (30+ characters).

FWIW ... this response is not about writing secondaries with abbreviations.

Instead, it is a friendly suggestion about the nuts-and-bolts of your future practice as an aspiring physician. Just my humble thoughts, that's all.

1. As an aspiring physician, it is advisable to "get into the habit" of not universally assuming that all readers will use the same abbreviations that you might be using in your daily practice of medicine, because any abbreviation can have multiple competing interpretations and meanings, within different specialties.

For instance, it may be common for some clinicians, staff, attendings or hospitals to use "ICC" as the abbreviation for "Intensive Coronary Care."

2. In addition, if you choose to use an ambiguous abbreviation in different medical venues (e.g., academic medical centers or group medical practices), that rely wholly on electronic health records, any erroneous/ambiguous abbrevation that you may have already entered in the patient's electronic health record begins to repeat the same erroneous/ambiguous abbreviation throughout the patient's medical record, whenever the software detects the same abbreviation.

Not surprisingly, these types of (avoidable abbreviation) errors can lead to a lot of undue confusion or potentially adverse consequences related to actual patient care. Just saying.

Thanks for reading and best of success to you! 🙂

 

[LizzyM]

You can be in intensive coronary care or the international criminal court.... spell it out the first time or you could be locked up.

 

[polymerization]

You can be in intensive coronary care or the international criminal court.... spell it out the first time or you could be locked up.

"Harvard? Sweetie, this is the Hague."