I think it’s common knowledge, certainly I don’t need a cite, that most doctors have appalling handwriting. The same holds true for other countries from what I understand, believe it or not.
Certainly all mine did, starting with my pediatrician Dr. F. Again, it’s common knowledge.
But has the matter ever been investigated? And do you have any theories?
Actually to get the ball rolling, I do have a theory of my own. Doctors have to memorize vast amounts of information. Their brains are literally stuffed. I know if you stuff, say, your stomach, you can do damage. Maybe this is how they damaged their brains, at least the part responsible for handwriting. (I am sure the rest of their brains are just fine. )
My father was a doctor and had terrible handwriting. He said it was because they had to take voluminous notes in medical school they basically start cutting corners and instinctively develop a type of shorthand so they can write faster. I don’t know why that wouldn’t apply to other professions, but that was his theory.
Yeah, I’d like some serious answers from those people too. My half-ass guess is it has to be some type of improvised stenography technique or an alien communication code. Or both.
Many doctors work long, stressful shifts and have to write quickly, with tired muscles, perhaps standing up or in some other non-ideal posture. That is enough to deteriorate anyone’s handwriting (and were they trained in proper penmanship in the first place)?
Also people might be hesitant or embarrassed to admit they cannot read someone’s handwriting, with potentially tragic results, which is why we always hear about doctors’ bad handwriting and not always about bad handwriting in general, which cannot be less than ubiquitous.
ETA I tend to write notes fast, not in shorthand but certainly the result is completely joined up with lots of abbreviations and ligatures. I am not writing prescriptions, but now that I think about it I would not be 100% sure a complete stranger could read it with perfect accuracy every time, it’s not something I ever give thought to.
The Army pushed me into awful handwriting. Try to copy down every important detail of a verbal operations order in a notebook you are holding in your hand and pretty handwriting goes right out the window. I manufactured a whole host of personal abbreviations and initialisms.
Then there’s my signature. It’s basically my simplified and almost legible initials with some squiggles between them. It was “carefully” developed as a young Lieutenant when my Company Commander volunteered us to run every individual weapons range for the battalion. Sign every one of a triple digit sized stack of individual results after a long day standing in the shitty weather and see how much effort you put into your handwriting not being atrocious.
Likewise with my father (on whom be peace), as evidenced by his med school notebooks. Also, as he grew older he developed an “essential” tremor which, while it didn’t affect his ability to practice medicine, certainly made his handwriting even worse.
(Many years ago there was a short-lived comic strip called Doctor Smock. In one strip he was asked why doctors’ handwriting was so bad; his response: “Our medical school penmanship instructor was a nearsighted chicken who drank a lot.”)
On the contrary, please do provide a cite. It certainly is a cliche, but is it a fact?
I think that Doctors’ writing is on average no worse than anyone else’s, but the actual words they write are incomprehensible to most people. You try writing Diclofenac Clindamycin Pantoprazole Clopidogrel in your best cursive, and see how many people can read it.
It doesn’t help that they use a lot of abbreviations, many of them Latin and Diclofenac Clindamycin Pantoprazole Clopidogrel would almost certainly be reduced to initials. The Latin abbreviations can be pretty obscure - who apart from a pharmacist would know that “c.m.s.” means “to be taken tomorrow morning” (cras mane sumendus).
The problem with using a shorthand that you make up on the spot is that it can be hard to decipher later on. I made some notes during a telephone conversation a few weeks ago and when I came to read them back a few days later, I couldn’t make head nor tail of them and had to make the phone call again.
The advent of the electronic medical record means handwriting issues are far, far less consequential than they used to be.
Also, there are well-accepted standards now for proper abbreviations. Ones that are subject to misinterpretation are discouraged or banned (i.e. in a hospital setting).
Not just electronic medical records but also electronic prescription ordering, so that rather than giving the patient a scribbled prescription sheet, the order is transmitted electronically to the pharmacy. Presumably this reduces transcription errors.
The issue of whether or not doctors’ handwriting is actually any worse is very plausible.
However, I’ll also add in the possibility of “god complex” and ego. Writing clearly would likely require that they slow down somewhat and put more thought and effort into it. Why do so for the mere plebes who have to read it?
Not saying all doctors are assholes. Just that they have a very high opinion (likely rightly so) of the value of their time, and they (consciously or sub) are instead assigning the time and effort to some lower skilled/paid person who has to decipher it.
A high percentage of the people who read physicians’ notes (in the diminishing number of cases where they are still handwritten) are…other physicians.
Given the number of times each day that I am required to read admit notes, consultants’ reports and operative reports in order to render proper patient care, I’d shoot myself if I had to read handwritten chart notes. Thank GOD for the electronic medical record.
Good point.
I have to read handwritten medical records quite often. It always impresses me that the writer believes no one other than they will ever be able to read them.
I can go one better. I translate tons of medical reports from Italy. First of all, the style of cursive penmanship they teach in Italy is completely different from how letter forms are taught in America. It’s inherently hard to read at its best. Now take that and deteriorate it in a doctor’s hand. When I was new at this, often all I could do was throw up my hands and enter “[illegible].” I’d recognize one word out of twenty and put that in, so that a whole paragraph would be reduced to e.g. “[illegible] patient was [illegible] from the [illegible] of the [illegible] parietal [illegible].” Which was not any better than altogether useless.
After years of blood, toil, tears, and sweat at this, it scares me how well I’ve learned to puzzle out Italian doctors’ deteriorated scrawls. :eek: Nowadays I can get almost all of it. I’ve also had to learn to interpret those abbreviations from context. For example, pz or px = paziente (patient), dx= destro (right), sx = sinistro (left), ab = a bisogno (as needed).
