Do all doctors have illegitimate handwriting, the answer is not known as only a few people in the society have their writing in public domain. So, this statement may not be true, but each and every word in a prescription or note is of utmost importance unlike another piece of papers. Any misinterpretation can be disastrous. In a BMJ editorial in March 2000, Leape and Berwick called handwritten medical notes a ‘dinosaur long overdue for extinction. Six and a half years on, the dinosaur is alive and well.
In 2002, a report in this Journal revealed that 15% of case histories were illegible. In 2005, three surgeons audited the legibility of 40 randomly selected operative notes from an orthopaedic ward in a large British hospital. Two nurses, two physiotherapists and two medical house officers were asked to rate the legibility of the notes as ‘excellent’, ‘good’, ‘fair’, or ‘poor’. Only 24%…
