UNIFOR Medicina 2013/2
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Bad Handwriting
There is an old joke that doctors go to school to learn how to write badly, and nurses go to school to learn how to read doctors’ handwriting. There is truth in the joke – computers analysis of handwriting of medical staff shows that doctors’ handwriting is a lot worse than that of nurses and administrative staff. Maybe it’s because doctors are always under pressure of time that they write very fast. The habit starts when they are medical students and gets worse as time passes.
Computer analysis shows that generally, medical staff are careful with numbers. However, they tend to form letters of the alphabet badly. When drug names look very similar, bad handwriting can mean patients get the wrong medicine. A young girl nearly died when she was given Methimazole instead of Metolazone (one is for high blood pressure and the other is for thyroid problems). And in 1999, an American cardiologist, Hamachandra Kolluru, wrote a prescription so badly that the pharmacist gave a patient the wrong medicine. This time the patient did die. And a court fined the doctor 225,000 US dollars.
Recently researchers studied 50 patient progress notes. They found that they could not read 16% of the words. The misunderstandings that this causes can mean that a patient is giving the wrong blood, or that a surgeon amputates the wrong limb. Fatal errors, of course, make news, but studies show that every year, hundreds of thousands of mistakes are made in hospitals around the world, and a lot of them are because of bad handwriting or abbreviations nobody understands. Bad handwriting also causes delays which are expensive and wasteful.
There are many technological solutions for the problems, and though digital technology can’t improve handwriting, it can improve the situation. At London’s Charing Cross Hospital, for example, patients wear bar codes (the same as in a supermarket) on their wrists or ankles. Staff use the bar codes along with handheld computers to get accurate, clear, and easy-to-read information.
1. Nurses study doctors’ handwriting at school. _____
2. Doctors generally write numbers more carefully than words. _____
3. Methimazole and Metolazone are used for different conditions. _____
4. Ramachandra Kolluru is a pharmacist._____
5. Researchers could understand 84% of doctors’ notes. _____
6. Many hospitals use abbreviations in order to avoid mistakes. _____
7. At Charing Cross Hospital, staff carry computers around. _____
1. (F); 2. (T); 3. (T); 4. (F); 5. (T); 6. (F); 7. (T)
1. (F); 2. (F); 3. (T); 4. (T); 5. (F); 6. (T); 7. (T)
1. (T); 2. (T); 3. (F); 4. (T); 5. (F); 6. (T); 7. (F)
1. (F); 2. (F); 3. (T); 4. (T); 5. (T); 6. (F); 7. (F)
1. (T); 2. (T); 3. (F); 4. (F); 5. (F); 6. (T); 7. (F)
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