Originally Posted by
Vulcan
Waaaay back when I was a pharmacist practicing in a hospital, we used to prepare IVs, some of which were due to be started at midnight. I felt it was critical that everyone understood the when to administer them. As such, I instituted a policy that all meds scheduled for 'midnight' administration were labled "12:01AM, x/xx/xxxx. In this way, there could be no confusion.
Scott, if you read this, you might consider this suggestion as a simple IT change that will avoid a lot of confusion/phone calls.
A Wikipedia entry on this subject states
"The use of "12:00 midnight" or "midnight" is still problematic because it does not distinguish between the midnight at the start of a particular day and the midnight at its end. To avoid confusion and error, some U.S. style guides recommend either clarifying "midnight" with other context clues, or not referring to midnight at all. For an example of the latter method, "midnight" is replaced with "11:59 p.m." for the end of a day or "12:01 a.m." for the start of the next day. That has become common in the United States in legal contracts and for airplane, bus, or train schedules, though some schedules use other conventions."
Obviously CO has left room for confusion.