Handwriting: Clean It Up!

[fzwarrior]

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Alright, after working in the pharmacy for 3 & 1/2 years I have seen some of the worst handwriting imaginable. Some scripts would be more legible if they were written in wingdings font rather than the scribbled mess that makes it impossible to distinguish between dactinomycin and daptomycin. One of the most common statements I hear from patients when taking their prescriptions is "how do you read theses things?" I thought it would be necessary to advise all of the future doctors on this site to end the tradition of sloppy handwriting and make it readable. Or, you could take advantage of some of the new methods of writing scripts such as e-scribing. It saves the pharmacist a lot of time and reduces the risk the patient will recieve the wrong drug.

 

[BenUstudent]

Dude I am all for e-scribing. I could send a scrip via blackberry

 

[mgirl21]

👍 My pet peeve was when we couldn't tell who wrote the script. Either get a script pad with your name on it or sign your name legibly. Especially when you write scripts from a hospital and the patient has no idea what your name is. "It starts with an S" doesn't help.

 

[RogueUnicorn]

two thoughts -
1) lots of hospitals these days print out scripts
2) writing in PRINT helps quite a bit

 

[circulus vitios]

All these years of honing my future "doctor signature" have gone to waste. 🙁

 

[GlamDoc]

Ugh. I totally hear ya on this one. I work at the pharm too, and 94.5% of docs write have horrible handwriting. After years of scrutinizing and interpreting scripts, the pharmacist can now recognize individual docs by their scribbles. 😀

She also told me about a time when one of the doctors couldn't even recognize his own script.

 

[Hoody]

Dude I am all for e-scribing.

E-scribing is good stuff. So is having the office nurse or secretary phone in the scrip. The only thing my facility uses paper scrips for is narcotics.

 

[aggie08]

In 5 or 10 years, probably by the time most here are doctors, it will all be on the computer or printed anyway.

 

[LizzyM]

By the time these pre-med folks are licensed to prescribe drugs, technology (and the plantiffs' bar) will have all but eliminated handwritten prescriptions.

 

[Isisfusion]

Darn! And I was recently told that I have the perfect crap writing to prescribe meds. Oh well. Like it's been mentioned, we'll probably have to get used to typing them up.

 

[Compass]

My handwriting is great. You can read it!

 

[insane]

block letters?

 

[mvenus929]

I work in a lab, and we get the same horrible handwriting. And then when we interpret something one way, the techs come out and complain that we read it wrong... "it says B-N-P, not B-M-P. Call the doc and get a clarification." Except usually a MG isn't ordered with a BNP. Just saying.

Of course, the unit secretaries are pretty bad at interpreting some of them too... A GGT turns into a 6-hour glucose tolerance test. Two very different tests, with two very different treatments of the patient. The secretary (and charge nurse) wouldn't listen to us when we said that the doc probably didn't want that 6-hour glucose tolerance test.