Why do doctors write so badly?!!!

Writing badly for a doctor is a matter of survival! In a single eight hour shift s/he can write their signature alone fifty or more times!

The real problem is the amount of paperwork that needs to be done for each patient. For legal reasons, everything done, or found, has to be documented on paper prior to discharge. Many doctors eventually realize that most of this.

paper-trail ends up stuffed in files and forgotten, and interferes in what is really important - seeing and treating patients.

Many also realize that what they write is not intended for the public to read, only for themselves and their peers, and as you'll see, the way we write is decipherable amongst ourselves once you know what to look for. Also you'll see that bad handwriting in doctors is made not born (how could anyone get through college far less med school writing so badly).

How to Write like a Doctor

Abbreviate - It's much faster to write 'SOB' than 'shortness of breath'.
Write small - distance takes time so writing in between letters small saves time.
Skip vowels - cn u rd ths sntnce? Most sentences can be read without vowels.
Write the first two or three letters legibly then scrawl - as doctors and allied health pros use the same words over and over it only takes one or two letters in context to recognize a specialist word.


The problem with this kind of writing is when doctors get so into the habit of writing bad that they write everything, to their peers and outside, in this medical shorthand no-one else - and often they themselves - can't read. So it's important to remember that it has limitations like any other tool in the medicine bag.

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Thank you GOD

lol....

I think after 36 hours of continuous work, its evident that we should write carelessly!!

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Lolz.....

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Hehe... the problem with writing illegibly is two-fold though..

A) I've seen directions from a consultant scribbled down so poorly that neither the nurses, any of the doctors currently on the staff nor I could interpret what he wanted. I could make out that there was some tenderness in the lower right quadrant of the abdomen from the drawing though.

B) Abbreviations are the cause of some of the errors in medicine. True, you have to be quite fresh on the job if you honestly think that someone should get 61 units of insulin (the I in IU (international units) supposedly looked like a 1)) but it does happen, and at times the same abbreviation may mean different things (tetralogy of fallot or trans-oesophagal ultrasound (not sure if it shouldn't be obvious from context but..)).

Oh, and from what asrafee said.. I will not be a happy camper when I, after 35 hours of work, have to spend 10 minutes trying to work out what the hell the doc wrote last time 79-year-old lady was in, who is now in the ER with altered cognitive state.

Also, above is written after plenty of hours without sleep. If you can make any sense of it, it's due to the powers of computers.

PS. All notes should be made into digital print, if not written there at once, then transcribed by secretaries and later checked by original author and verified. I HATE illegible shit in the notes.

yep....that is true

I always insist that doctors should write their directions clearly. Your handwriting may not be beautiful but it should be legible.
universally accepted abbreviation should be used not one's own like "SOB' for shortness of breath

so many people asked this me question so many times.

according to me this is because of the stress they have faced while studying so much thats why i think so.....

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speed, stress, quantity are all great reasons. plus if you write illegibly you can just say that it was not you who wrote it. :-) just kidding of course