Doctors Need to Improve Handwriting & Stop Risking Lives of Patients

Submitted by Annabel Tautou on Sat, 04/02/2011 - 07:28

Leading Canadian Doctor Louis Francescutti, President of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, said that the illegible writing from doctors and nurses on medical charts and prescriptions put patients at a “totally unacceptable” risk. He referenced the example of male nurse Wilfred Douglas Gordon from Nova Scotia who was reprimanded last month for having handwriting that was impossible to read. In order to keep his nursing license, Gordon was ordered by the College of Registered Nurses of Nova Scotia to take a class in documentation. After the class, he’ll go under six months of review of his handwriting.

Although Dr. Francescutti said that doctors should be either typing or dictating their notes by now instead of writing everything with the old-fashioned pen and paper, he offered a solution to forcing doctors to write more legibly. “If you pull out a physician’s chart and you can’t read what it says, they should get paid for that procedure. Patients’ lives are actually in danger by misinterpretation of drug dosage or a procedure. It’s totally inexcusable”.

This inability to read the handwriting of doctors has been a problem in the medical industry for years. In fact, a 2004 study by medical institutions in Ottawa showed that the most common error in patient care was when they were given the wrong medicine or prescriptions due to sloppy handwriting.