The evolution of doctors' handwriting

Years ago I vowed to be the change I wished to see. The stereotype of doctors having bad handwriting is well established. I put that down to laziness. How could someone let something as important as their handwriting deteriorate? I like to think I have decent enough handwriting and I consider it a unique identifier. After fingerprints and forensic dental impressions, I'm sure it's up there.

I have been on too many a ward, trying to read a patient's notes and have had to skip over large portions of writing because they were pretty much illegible. My first thought has always been "Well whoever wrote this would be in deep doo doo if that patient ever took them to court." Other than being aesthetically pleasing, having decent handwriting actually serves another purpose: it keeps you out of prison with a license to practice. This has always been my motivation to develop good note-taking skills and avoid developing chicken-scratch script.

That is until I was asked to take notes on a busy ward round the other day. On a ward round, senior doctors reviewing patients don't usually take notes themselves. Their juniors act as scribes. I was struggling to keep up with documenting the doctor's plan of action for a particular patient, trying to remember what he said the heart rate was and which side he heard crackles on. Things were going downhill. I was appalled to see the sprawling scribbles I had to put my signature next to. Honestly it was a disgrace. In that moment I understood. In spite of the best intentions of naive medical students-like myself, time constraints and the sheer volume of documentation required can distort the handwriting of even the most diligent scribe. Computer-typed notes are not much better. The most basic of words get misspelled: "Pt complains of abdo pan, O/E SNT, referr for GI inpit." Need I say more.

I leave you with one other anecdote. My mother is a GI consultant. She made a shopping list one day and we were on our way to the supermarket. We spent nearly a hour trying to understand what the last item on the list was: "2ploc? What is 2ploc?" Imagine a huge rounded 'Z' and an 'i' that was too small to see. The word was meant to be "Ziploc"- a brand of plastic resealable bags used for storing food.

Well. There you are.