Doctors and Handwriting

[lesliepear]

I went to the doctor Saturday AM for a sinus infection. (Got antibiotics and doing much better).

The doctors office for some reason, keeps all of the medical trade papers out in the waiting room such as MDNG, Medical Economics and Diversion Magazine - For Physicians at Leisure.

I did find one article amusing on how physicians indeciperable handwriting can cause errors and how to improve it. I have a friend who is a physician from Argentina (not yet US licensed). She has the nicest handwriting oddly enough.

Comments

[cherokeepurple.livejournal.com]

I'd have to make excuses just to sit in the waiting room and read the papers!

[tanyalita.livejournal.com]

Clint gets some crazy magazine similar to Diversion. It is sent to his office for free. We usually get a good laugh out of it. It has articles on uber-expensive trips and products, stuff way out of our price range. We get so many medical journals and magazines sent to our house unsolicited that I often feel as if I'm still a librarian.

Clint's handwriting is so-so.

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

What kind of doctor is Clint?

Medical Economics is interesting. It's published by the same people who do the PDR that lists all the drugs and isn't located too far from me.

[tanyalita.livejournal.com]

He's a neurologist.

Medical Economics is an excellent publication. It is one of the few free magazines that most medical libraries collect.

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

My doctor's office finally eliminated the handwriting problems all together...each doctor carries a tablet PC, prescriptions are entered from menus on those PCs, and then an automatically generated prescription form is faxed to the pharmacy specified in your personal information.

[goodjoan]

My kids ped does the same thing, sans the fax. She has a little tablet that she can check the dosages, cross refernce out insurance to make sure it's covered, write the rx then send it to the printer, where it spits out a printed, legible copy that has all the info, including the kids DOB that the pharmacy always asks for!

[kathykat.livejournal.com]

I heard once, was it on NPR? that it is very very true that Dr. handwriting is atrocious, and the reason attributed was level of intelligence or some such thing...I can't quite recall, but it did make me go, a-haaa!

I googled it and came up with this, indeed from NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1318247

[kateaw]

My Dad used to receive lots of letters when he was a resident in a home for disabled service folk. The staff couldn't believe that some were from his old GP as the writing was so neat and legible. However they had no trouble believing that his cousin was a doctor from his atrocious scrawl.