Understanding the Starred Favorites Feature

Sometimes there are many descriptions for a single term or medical abbreviation. This is more prone to happen when there are only two characters (e.g., PO, AB). MedAbbrev has added a new feature to allow our users to mark their favorites using the new "Star" feature on a particular term/description combination. Just click on the star icon if this is an entry that you commonly use. You can unselect the term by clicking on the star icon to remove it. When search results are displayed, the entries with a gold star will show up before the less commonly used entries (which remain in alphabetical order).

Please keep in mind that when you click the star, you personally are saying that you think this particular term is more common and should thus show up at the top of the list. However, the search results don't change unless there are at least 4 other users voting for the same term/description combination. 

Here’s an example of how the starred favorites option works. If you do a search on "BAC", and the entries related to blood alcohol are more likely to be used in your organization than "benzalkonium chloride", then you could click on the star icon to cast your vote for the entries for "blood alcohol content" and "blood-alcohol concentration". It will look something like this:

The change in how the search results are displayed doesn’t happen immediately. In order to see the new results, you'd need to click the search button again. At this point (as long as there are a minimum of 5 votes for that), you’ll see the blood alcohol results showing at the top of the list.

Just like government elections, you only get a single "vote" per term/description combination, so once you have clicked on the star icon, it will change to a solid color to indicate that you have already voted.

Note: If you accidentally click the star icon for your vote but didn't mean to, just click on the star again and it will go from solid color back to the outline shape.

If you forget what the star column means, there’s a little blue circle with an "i" which stands for "information." Just click on that for a little reminder of what that column is for.