well, my mom always said my handwriting would be a perfect fit to be a doctorb(the b is for bargain). Now, this ruins my hopes and dreams.

Haven't the medical profession over there heard of these new inventions called "Computers" and "Printers"?

The jokes started when Ben Phipps announced he was going to medical school. People asked him, Are you practicing your handwriting?

LOL!

Wait.

That isn't funny. At all.

Sloppy handwriting kills

It's not just the handwriting that is wretched: it's also the abbreviations that makes it worse!



Look at the subtitle of that book: "26,000 Conveniences at the Expense of Communication and Safety." Add their penchant for crummy writing and that's a recipe for bad news.

If you want to see how doctors have trouble with confusing abbreviations,check out this page where there is this "Do Not Use" list of abbreviations.

Thank goodness that doctors are using the computer to print up prescriptions.

How about we pass another law that makes it illegal for drug manufacturers to include either a "z" or an "x" in the trade name of their new products? Because they do this almost every time now, and it's driving me to distraction. Many times they will manage to get both in the name, like zyprexa. And yeah, "y" is gaining in popularity also. There are 23 other letters in the alphabet. To paraphrase a famous character, "The alphabet, can you use it motherfarker?"

Right, instead of mandating technology, you know, something that is embedded in the patient's record, checks for drug interaction and relays the information directly to the pharmacy (instead of the obsolete paper method) we legislate neat handwriting.

Is this an example of morans thinking inside the box? If so, it must be an amazingly small box.

probably a huge generalisation, but the brightest people always tend to have horrible handwriting.. brain working too fast for the hand maybe?

"Hate to break the news to you... You have harpos."

Bad handwriting is one thing, and is problematic. Bad spelling, OTOH, is for the submitter. I'm guessing most docs know how to spell. Crappy headline in the guise of trying to be cute...

Crapweasel

Haven't the medical profession over there heard of these new inventions called "Computers" and "Printers"?

Many family doctors and small clinics will print out prescriptions on the clinic letterhead, and then just sign them, but if you're even in the emergency room you'll see that they don't usually have the time for that.

Also, with a written prescription, a doctor only needs to take their prescription pad with them when they're travelling, as opposed to a computer, printer, and special paper.

The Illegible handwriting comes about from the unbelivable amounts of paperwork a doctor has to fill in legal reasons. In the uk now msot prescriptions are printed out becuase of this reason!

Doctors' "illegible" handwriting was used as a security feature to ensure that prescriptions couldn't be forged.

That's what I heard, anyway.

as long as you can distinguish the first and last characters of every word you can still get your prescription.. unless of course you mistake oymxroon with ocxynoitn

Oddly enough, "Nwe Lwa" was the cabdriver on my last trip from the airport. You know malpractice insurance rates are going through the roof when doctors have to supplement their income this way.

What, doctors in the US have illegible handwriting too?

Weird.

I remember Sav-On pharmacy in Southern California calling my doctor when I'd take a prescription to them. This both ensured non-forgery and prescription correctness. I thought this was common practice.

/has the handwriting of a doctor
//one year away from Electronics Eng.
///Told my 1st grade teacher we'd all be typing with computers by the year 2000
////GUESS WHO WAS RIGHT!? :)
/////Slashes make everything more fun

Submitter needs spellchack.

/shut up if you don't get the joke

Crapweasel: Haven't the medical profession over there heard of these new inventions called "Computers" and "Printers"?


Yes. Many hospitals use computers to put prescriptions in, but they usually let the nurses do that so the doctor can see other patients. And, it's usually faster to write it out, which is why they rarely use computers in the ER.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Well done on the headline, submitter!

Yeah, sure. This is like making it illegal for doctors to breathe.

Nice hed.

Would it really kill them to take an extra 4 seconds to print (handwriting not computer printer)? And if it does, there's nothing the doctor could've done at that point anyway.

/obsessive like a calligrapher
//hates writing essays in class
///thank god for computers
////80wpm

I should have been a doctor, I read that headline like it was normal.

horrible headline

Yes, doctors are known for having awful handwriting.

To compound this problem, drug companies are known to have gibberish names. No, seriously, WHERE do they think up some of these random series of syllables?

Now, I know pharmacists are supposed to have extensive knowledge of their drugs, interactions, uses, dosages, etc. so that they can perform an idiot check, but still.

Being the son of a doctor, my dad has horrible handwriting. So do all his partners. My handwriting is also crap.

/could read the headline

I design medical forms for a living, and I've noticed that physicians also can't spell.

Horrible headline has now been thirded. That's bad handwriting, not writer's dyslexia, submitter.

Smoe afkresr rae hmuorsels nda olrevy ltielar.

To be fair, Fark only uses one font for headlines; to simulate messy handwriting properly, you'd need to use one of the fancy cursive scripts. Feigning dyslexia is the closest approximation submitter or any of us could do.

And I really don't see why it's so hard for doctors and other people to write legibly. Seriously. I almost never handwrite--all-caps printing or that newfangled typing thing for me, thanks--but when I do, everyone can puzzle it out with no more than a second of thought. Is fine motor control really so rare? Women, at least, should get nightly practice...

Speed of writing is directly proportional to crappiness of handwriting legibility.

I agree that writing should be legible, but technically any errors in filling a RX are the fault of the pharmacy. A phone isn't that far away from the pharmacist or their technician.

/calls in Rx's to pharmacies on a daily basis.

hoohoodilly

You'd be amazed.

This article is spot-on, as this is a serious problem in the medical field. It's not just prescriptions, but medical charts too. A large part of my job is chart review, and sometimes I can't read over 50% of the notes. Most of the time a nurse familier with the doctor can decipher, but it is not uncommon for us all to throw our hands in the air and never know, including the doctor.

Their spelling often sucks, too. Names of drugs, ailments, common words.... you know what they call the medical student who graduates at the bottom of their class?

Doctor.

How would you like to get a ticket or arrested for not doing your job right. It's comforting to know that some farsighted Pharmacist can now call the cops on me.

mdin2k

When your job directly affects the safety and welfare of others, you are obligated to do your job correctly. If you fark that up, it's punishable.

Don't like it? Don't be a doctor.

Tanthalas


You must be a Lawyer.

No, but I find it amusing that you put "MD" after your name here on fark.com. Trying to gain more respect? ;-)

No, I'm just kidding. I have respect. I'm just saying, you are not immune to malpractice, no matter how bad the frivilous malpractice suits have become. That's a larger issue; in my direct work experience, doctor handwriting is a serious problem. And I don't even understand it; why can't doctors just write clearer? Don't they realize other people have to read it in order to properly carry out orders, give prescriptions, etc? And any response such as "We're too busy; we're too important to care, etc." is totally invalid.

It's just frustrating that the government decides to enact laws based on someone elses opinion. If some guy doesnt like the way i cross my t's, I get stuck paying $500.. The whole thing just seems poorly thought out.

I think you're overgeneralizing it in order to complain about it. First of all, its a Montana state law, not a federal law. Secondly, I'm pretty sure that if you merely cross your t's in a funky way, you're not going to be fined. The overwhelming majority of people who have to read doctor handwriting agree that the quality is poor and unsafe - when the prescription is dangerously or totally illegible, that's when this law will kick in.

Solution? Just make sure people can read your prescription. I'm not sure how this can be argued at all. "I have a right to write prescriptions that people can't read!"

Issue fountain pens and PDAs to all doctors -- between the two, most doctors should be able to improve a little bit.

I went to costco to get a new pair of eyeglasses and since the lady at the counter couldn't read the prescription she had to call his office. The funny thing was that she and my doctor's secretary were on a first name basis.

It shouldn't take a phone call to process a subscription because it looks like a deranged monkey wrote it.