Abbreviations are commonly used in the medical world to save time and space whilst writing in the patients' medical records. As various specialties have evolved, each has developed a collection of commonly used abbreviations within its practice, which may not be recognizable to those not working within the same field. The purpose of this study was to assess whether we, the multidisciplinary team members, correctly interpret the abbreviations used in the medical records. We analysed one week of orthopaedic surgical medical records for the use of abbreviations and assessed their appreciation by other members of the multidisciplinary team by means of a standardized questionnaire. We found great variability in the understanding of these abbreviations by different groups of health care professionals. As expected, the orthopaedic surgeons produced significantly more right answers when compared to the other groups, but even they could correctly interpret just over half (57.24 per cent) of the abbreviations. There were many misinterpretations of the abbreviations across the specialties posing imminent clinical risk. Whilst abbreviations may indeed save time, the observed inter-group variation in correct interpretation of these abbreviations is unacceptable. We recommend that the abbreviations have no place in the multidisciplinary world and their continued use will only lead to eventual clinical error.

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As access to the Internet becomes increasingly available, research applications in medicine will increase. This paper describes the use of the Internet, and, more specifically, the World Wide Web (WWW), as a channel of communication between EDs throughout the world and investigators who are interested in facilitating the collection of data from multiple sites. Data entered into user-friendly electronic surveys can be transmitted over the Internet to a database located at the site of the study, rendering geographic separation less of a barrier to the conduction of multisite studies. The electronic format of the data can enable real-time statistical processing while data are stored using existing database technologies. In theory, automated processing of variables within such a database enables early identification of data trends. Methods of ensuring validity, security, and compliance are discussed.