Guidelines with Dates

Published on March 20 2009 by VINOD NAIR

The ideal format for writing dates is in month, day, year format where the year is separated from month and day by a comma.

For example: The patient will undergo repair on January 9, 2006.

However, when military date format is used, i.e. date, month, year, commas are not used to separate them.

For example: The patient underwent surgery on 12 December 2005.

When the date comes in between the sentence, then the year has to be placed between a set of commas.

For example: On January 1, 2005, the patient expired.

In transcription, the days of week from Sunday through Saturday are always capitalized.

For example: Thursday, Saturday

Similarly, one needs to capitalize all the months in a year.

For example: January, February, March, April

Arabic numerals should always be used to indicate day of month as well as while transcribing year.

For example: January 20, 2006.

When only month and year are given for a specific entity, no comma should be used to separate them.

For example: The patient was operated in March 2005.

Ordinal Usage:

Ordinals find frequent use during transcription. They are to be used in cases when the day of the month precedes the month and it is also preceded by the year. They are not used in month, day, and year format. No commas are to be used when ordinals are used.

For example:
(Correct): On the 1st of January 2006, the soldier got promoted to major.
(Wrong way): On January 1st, 1980, the soldier got promoted to major.

Virgule Usage while transcribing dates:

During transcription, dates are to be transcribed in Arabic numerals in MM/DD/YYYY format
separated by virgules (slash) especially while transcribing dictation dates, transcription dates, admission dates, discharge dates, visit dates. In such cases, months are not spelled out. Therefore, months are transcribed in Arabic numerals form 01 to 12 and dates from 01 to 31 and are transcribed in MM/DD/YYYY format separated by virgules.

For example:
(Dictated): ADMISSION DATE is first January 2006.
(Transcribed): ADMISSION DATE: 01/01/2006
(Dictated): DISCHARGE DATE is second January 2006
(Transcribed): DISCHARGE DATE: 01/02/2006