A New Term For Transcribing

摘要

The medication-use process involves prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, administration, monitoring, and patient education. In the age of informatics, it is time to consider different terms for "transcribe" and "transcribing" in particular. To transcribe implies a rote process with no interpretation. Transcribing conjures up the image of monks in a monastery faithfully transcribing Biblical passages before the age of the Gutenberg press. On the medical side, transcription is a process in which a strand of DNA is converted into a strand of messenger RNA. Neither is a highly interpretive or cognitive process representative of what health-system pharmacists do. There may be some pharmacies that take a written order and faithfully and physically transcribe that order by hand to a pharmacy profile. This process is no longer the norm.