The use of the Greek letter mu and/or use of the lowercase letter "u" as abbreviations for the unit of measure prefix "micro" is unacceptable from a safety standpoint.

[dodson]

The use of the Greek letter mu and/or use of the lowercase letter "u" as abbreviations for the unit of measure prefix "micro" is unacceptable from a safety standpoint.

U and u are listed on The Joint Commission's Do Not Use list because they are often confused with unit: ​https://www.jointcommission.org/facts_about_do_not_use_list/

This is also published on the Institute for Safe Medication Practices website: ​http://www.ismp.org/tools/errorproneabbreviations.pdf; ​http://www.ismp.org/tools/abbreviations/

The use of "ug" to mean micrograms is completely unacceptable....all of the unit of measure prefixes for micro should be updated to be "mc" instead. "mcg" as an example for microgram is considered to be an acceptable display.

[Gunther Schadow]

I completely disagree with this requirement deduced from the Joint Commission list, since the first day the list came out many years ago. The argument is flimsy. The writing "mc" is completely bogus (as is "cc" by the way.) Fortunately there is no need at all to argue this or update the UCUM standard, because what doctors write on paper or type into text boxes is completely independent of the codes that are being used for computer systems to communicate. So any software used in medicine where this might be considered an issue is free to display to the users what they are accustomed to and best work with.