Doctors and their handwriting
If there is a common joke universally about doctors, then it has got to be about their sloppy handwriting. And personally, I would tend to agree with the generalisation.
However, the bad handwriting actually causes trouble. Recent survey by National Academies of Science's Institute of Medicine reveals a shocking statistic. 7000 people die annually due to the doctor's sloppy handwriting skills and more than 1.5 million injure themselves due to medical mistakes. And this is in America alone. Whoa!
The aim is now to convert all prescription writing to electronic format so that there is no chance of error ( or atleast reduced chances). Big corporate houses are teaming up with insurance providers and hospitals to ensure that doctors in the US use electronic format for prescription.
This is definitely a plausible solution in the medium to long term in US, but across the world this just won't work.
The simplest solution I propose is to have handwriting classes for all medical students. The doctors should also pass a handwriting certification exam every alternate year to have a valid license to operate. They should also be taught calligraphy and all other artistic stuff, so that they may move from an unintelligible prescription to artistically decorated one. We could also have awards for the best written/ decorated prescription. The possibilities are endless :)
3 comments:
artistically decorated prescriptions! innovative yes, but i think uve got too much idle time on ur hands... to have come up with something like that...
thats not gonna work. the sloppy handwriting comes because of the speed with which they write, making notes during classes, or in their exams.....
~gv
rach, Gv - was kidding :)
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