help decoding a prescription...

[whosyourbadkitty]

i sure could use some help... i'm transcribing medical records for a pain management doctor and of course i can't read his writing. forget that i have no experience doing this but it's a great addition to my income and i'm figuring it all out.

anyway... i need help... he's written out a "change of medication" that reads: percocet 5mg 1/2 tablet?? PO a circle with a dot in the middle, the number 8L? PNN. and i have no clue what it all means. from what i've figured out so far, he's prescribing percocet, 5mg, 1/2 tablet, by mouth, and the rest is foreign to me and i don't know if i've even got the mg right... it looks like a 5.

can anyone help me with this????????

[EricJRN, MSN, RN]

PRN is not really a timeframe. It simply means 'as needed.' There's usually some guidance as to how often the med can be taken PRN. This is what the previous poster was getting at.

As an example, Percocet 5 mg, 1 tab PO, q8h prn. In other words, take as needed, but not closer together than every 8 hours. (In fact, as the previous poster also said, I suspect that 8L is really supposed to be q8h, but again, it's really out of the scope of this website to offer such specific advice.)

[whosyourbadkitty]

oh... i get it. ya... i suppose someone shouldn't be taking all the percocet they want, huh?

is that what the 8L means? did he miss that? should it be q8H? i guess the saga is not truly over.

[EricJRN, MSN, RN]

oh... i get it. ya... i suppose someone shouldn't be taking all the percocet they want, huh?

is that what the 8L means? did he miss that? should it be q8H? i guess the saga is not truly over.

Yeah I'm thinking it was supposed to be q8h.

[whosyourbadkitty]

i'm going to pull that report and ask him about it before he files it as complete. thanks for catching that one. :yelclap: