QoD in medical and nursing contexts historically meant every other day from the Latin phrase quaque altera die, meaning one dose every other day, not multiple times per day. However, this abbreviation is now considered dangerous and is discouraged by patient safety organizations like The Joint Commission and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices because QOD can be easily misread as QD which means daily or QID which means four times a day, leading to serious medication errors. Because of this risk, The Joint Commission includes QOD on its Do Not Use abbreviation list and recommends writing every other day in full instead. If you see QOD on an old prescription, it meant once every other day, for example Monday, Wednesday, Friday. It did not mean four times a day; that is QID. In modern practice, you should never use QoD to mean every other day; you should write every other day to avoid confusion. In other contexts, QoD can mean Quote of the Day or Question of the Day, which have nothing to do with dosing frequency. If you are a patient and see QoD on your medication instructions, you should clarify with your pharmacist or doctor immediately to confirm whether they mean daily, every other day, or something else, to prevent overdosing or underdosing.
1 votes
Marked as accepted