Why Do Doctors Have Bad Handwriting?

You must have gone to the hospital yesterday to get a prescription for someone or for yourself, and then you tried reading the doctor's prescription and wondered if it was written in English or some secret agent code.

I've been there before so you're not alone.

For a very long time, terrible handwriting has been one of the biggest thing known about doctors. Patients in the hospital joke about it and even comedians make fun of it.

But you see pharmacists, they somehow seem to read and understand it without breaking a sweat or squinting their eyes like we do.

So the real question here is, do doctors actually have bad handwriting, or is there a reason why their handwriting are that way?

Well, I did my research about it, and what I found has little to nothing to do with poor handwriting.

For years, everything was written by hand. 

In the 18th and 19th centuries, physicians/doctors recorded every patient's symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and prescriptions using what was in existence - pen and paper.

There were no digital health records, no tablets, and definitely, no autocorrect.

The faster a doctor could write your prescription, the faster they could move on to the next patient, and because of that, the habit never really disappeared.

You see, saving time to attend to the next patient, was more important than a beautiful writing.

For example , a doctor arrived at work and before he could get to his office, he/she is already seeing 30 - 50 patients, waiting. Now imagine writing detailed notes for every one of them.

It will take a lot of time.

When doctors are constantly trying to keep up with the time, neat handwriting quickly becomes the least important part of their job.

Their priority was not to produce beautiful handwriting and make people gush over it. It was for making sure important medical information gets recorded before they see the next patient.

After years of doing this, writing fast became the second nature of all doctors in the world. But unfortunately, neatness is often the first casualty.

But that's not all. There's actually another problem.

Doctors don't just write ordinary words. They constantly writing long names of diseases, medications, procedures, and medical conditions, that sometimes they are impossible to pronounce.

So, to avoid writing every long word in full, many doctors created shortcuts and abbreviations to save time. Years of repeating these shortcuts, their notes started looking more like mysterious symbols, and sometimes codes, than actual words.

To everyone else, it's literally gibberish but to the doctor, it makes perfect sense.

The most fascinating reason about their handwriting is that, their brain move faster than their hand.

While researching, I found out that when people think faster than they can physically write, their handwriting naturally becomes messier.

So, because doctors analyze symptoms, recall years of medical knowledge, make medical decisions, and plan treatments at the same time, their brain is move at incredible speed, while their hand simply tries to keep up.

It understandable, but the result of it all is an handwriting that looks rushed, uneven, and impossible to read.

If you have a friend or know someone who is a medical student, ask for their schedule, you'll understand why.

Medical school is filled with lectures, exams, hospital rounds, and endless note-taking.

Medical students spend years writing as quickly as possible just to keep up with their lecturer.

They can't stop their lecture to remind future doctors to improve their handwriting.

Accuracy and speed are important, but nice and visible handwriting? 

Forget about it, because by the time they become qualified doctors, fast writing has already become a deep habit.

Now, the part that baffles me, is how the heck are pharmacists able to read it.  

And the shocking answer is experience.

Yes, you heard right. 

Experience.

Pharmacists and nurses see similar prescriptions every single day, so they are able to familiarize themselves with common medications, standard abbreviations, and the writing styles of local doctors.

It's almost like understanding someone's accent.

With that being said, we should also known that bad handwriting can become dangerous.

Illegible handwriting is not always funny because there have been many cases where badly written prescriptions caused medication errors, leading patients to receive the wrong drugs or incorrect dosage.

Because of these risks, hospitals around the world have stopped handwritten prescriptions because their patient safety comes first.

Today, many doctors type their notes instead of writing them, reducing the need for handwritten documents.

Typed prescriptions are easier to read, hard to misinterpret, and way safer for patients.

Though some doctors still jot down quick notes by hand, but the days of poorly written prescriptions are slowly coming to an end.

So, let's keep in mind that doctors don't write poorly because they're careless or incapable of writing neatly. Their bad handwriting is as the result of years of intense training, relentless work, medical terminology, and the constant pressure to make quick decisions.