Generally, doctors have terrible and illegible handwriting and it is a global problem irrespective of their specialty, position, and designation. Unreadable handwriting in prescription may compel patients to take wrong medicine or wrong dosage and can also lead to unnecessary discomfort. Pharmacists can also get confuse and may dispense wrong medications. There are many possible reasons for such handwriting of doctors, including busy work, many abbreviations both popular and non-popular, approved and non-approved.
In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), USA, had released a study report, “To err is human: Building a Safer Health System”. The report revealed that 44,000 to 98,000 people die annually in the USA from medical errors and out of them, about 7,000 deaths are due to messy handwriting. In India itself, poor handwriting has caused a number of deaths of patients and increased the…
