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Ruth Filik
Ruth
Filik
Kevin Purdy
Kevin
Purdy
Alastair Gale
Alastair
Gale
David Gerrett
David
Gerrett
Drug name confusion: evaluating the effectiveness of capital ("Tall Man") letters using eye movement data
Loughborough University
2006
Medication error
Drug labelling
Look-alike names
Eye movements
Tall Man letters
Patient safety
Information and Computing Sciences not elsewhere classified
2006-06-15 11:37:27
Journal contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Drug_name_confusion_evaluating_the_effectiveness_of_capital_Tall_Man_letters_using_eye_movement_data/9401168
Medication errors commonly involve confusion between drug names that look or sound alike. One possible method
of reducing these errors is to print sections of the names in ‘‘Tall Man’’ (capital) letters, in order to emphasise
differences between similar products. This paper reports an eye-tracking experiment that evaluates this strategy.
Participants had their eye movements monitored while they searched for a target product amongst an array of product
packs. The target pack was replaced by a similar distractor in the array. Participants made fewer errors when the
appearance of the names had been altered, that is, they were less likely to incorrectly identify a distractor as the target
drug. This result was reflected in the eye movement data.