It's etc and not ect!

[Davey Do]

Did you ever notice that people (allnurses members, e.g.) will write "ect" when they mean "etc"?

Et cetera, abbreviated to etc. is a Latin expression used in English to mean "and other things", or "and so forth". Translated literally from Latin, et means 'and', while cetera means 'the rest'; thus the expression means 'and the rest (of such things)'.

Whereas "ect"...

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT), often referred to as shock treatment, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in patients to provide relief from mental disorders.

Big difference.

[FSZ Student Nurse, RN]

However, we can still use those romantic abbreviations in our own personal notes, e.g. shift report.

I use some of my own abbreviations and symbols. Speaking of change, if a patient that I know well has no change, I use a Delta sign and glyph:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]27759[/ATTACH]

And if a patient insists they on a mission to collect three magical artifacts so they can outsmart Death, I use this:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]27809[/ATTACH]

You wouldn't want to confuse those two symbols! Maybe we should retire both?