More Drug-Related Deaths Blamed on Poor Handwriting by American Doctors

re: More Drug-Related Deaths Blamed on Poor Handwriting by American Doctors

Saritaface — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 19:22:46 GMT

Okay, if you are a doctor that has been entrusted with someones health, why cant you just take the extra 20 seconds to write neatly for prescriptions or get up with the times and use a computer printout for charts and RX's? Come on now, it is just not reasonable for doctors to have chicken scratch, ive seen it, cant read it, which makes me believe my pharmacist wont be able to read it. Not good.

re: More Drug-Related Deaths Blamed on Poor Handwriting by American Doctors

fellowservantinchrist — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 13:42:01 GMT

As a Registered Nurse who has worked in the Emergency Room for more than a decade, I have seen my fair share of terrible writing. Although this is true, I must stand up for the changes that have happened. In my area doctors are now required to write their prescriptions directly into a computer, they are printed on script paper, and then the doctor signs them. This has made medication errors decline in our hospital, and made it nicer for us nurses. I have met my share of doctors who were unable to reread their own writing! However, most doctors that I have worked with; would rather you ask them what it is they want for their patient than to see them be harmed.

So, as my motto goes: If I can't read, don't understand it, or at ALL feel uncomfortable with it-----ASK!

Anita from Ohio

re: More Drug-Related Deaths Blamed on Poor Handwriting by American Doctors

karrus — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 11:37:34 GMT

I worked in a local hospital as a unit secretary and had to decipher doctors precriptions and then rewrite the prescription and dosage on a med sheet. That was the hardest part of learning that job. I think doctors take classes in college on how to write bad. A number of times, I was way off the mark and thank God the nurse that would have that patient double checked behind me. If she could not read it either, all the nurses would hudle around and try to read the doctors writing. If she was not sure, she would then have to call the doctor and a number of times, the nurse got off the phone in tears because the doctor would yell at them so bad for calling. It made some of the nurses scared to even call at all. I think all hospitals should upgrade to all computers when it comes to precriptions, it would save many lives and save many nurses the anguish of having to call the doctor.

re: More Drug-Related Deaths Blamed on Poor Handwriting by American Doctors

Matilda_203 — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 07:41:55 GMT

Last year, I experienced this first hand- or almost. My youngest had an ER OP surg. The doctor gave me a script while telling me what it was and the dosage. I read along as he spoke. At the drug store, the pharm. looked at the paper- filled what he thought he saw. BUT when I got home, the dose was a full 4x the actual dosage that was written! When I called the drug store, he checked and said it was correct. So, I had to call the doctor back- still in surgery- to get this corrected. Later, the pharm called to apologize- he could not read what the doctor wrote... I asked him didn't seem alittle odd for a child? He told me they fill what the doctor writes and he overlooked that it was for a child! Had I not listened to the doctor and confirmed he had written it as he said- I am not sure I would have caught it in time.

re: More Drug-Related Deaths Blamed on Poor Handwriting by American Doctors

mmc88121 — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:59:38 GMT

Boy is this the truth, Doctors tend to have poor handwriting. I am not sure if it is from all the prescriptions they write or what. Having had to decipher several doctors handwriting over the years. I started calling them when I could not read something they wrote. Boy did that make most of them mad. The few that did not get mad earned my respect.

mmc88121

re: More Drug-Related Deaths Blamed on Poor Handwriting by American Doctors

Josh Rubin — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:10:17 GMT

I agree with this 100%. I used to work in hospitals, etc for years doing rehab. I would have to say 99.999%of the time, we had so much trouble reading reports and everything in the chart for that matter. This can and does lead to communication issues, compliance issues, etc.