Author: Chu Yang

Link: /question/19572643/answer/12259064

Source: Zhihu

Copyright belongs to the author . For commercial reprinting, please contact the author for authorization. For non-commercial reprinting, please indicate the source.

As a surgeon, I have been paying attention to this issue for several days and have not spoken. I just want to see what everyone thinks about this matter. After reading it, I feel that there are indeed some misunderstandings here. Let me talk about my understanding today.

It is a common phenomenon for doctors to have illegible handwriting, but it is not an absolute phenomenon. At least there are still many doctors I have come into contact with who have very neat handwriting. Moreover, illegible handwriting is just a phenomenon and is by no means intentional. For example, the inference mentioned by some friends that "in order to allow patients to buy medicines in this hospital, to prevent patients from seeing clearly the prescriptions prescribed by doctors and increase the hospital's drug revenue" is basically untenable, because most patients still choose to go to the hospital. Get medicines from the hospital (many medicines are only available in hospitals and are difficult to buy in pharmacies, and it is obviously more convenient to go to the hospital pharmacy to get medicines immediately after the hospital visit than to go to outside pharmacies). Besides, most doctors are so busy with outpatient services that they don’t even care about where you go to get medicine.

Then why do doctors have such scrawled handwriting? In fact, there are no industry secrets at all, they are just busy. You may wonder how you can be so busy that you can’t even write well? Let me tell you, many doctors have to see 40 or even 60 patients in the outpatient clinic in one morning (8:00-12:00). Each patient has to ask for medical history, check up, write outpatient medical records, and write prescriptions. Some patients have to Struggle with you. Imagine you are still in the mood to write neatly, stroke by stroke. After decades of being tortured by this kind of work day in and day out, my handwriting became increasingly sloppy.

How can the pharmacist understand the doctor’s writing is so sloppy? Just like what my third cousin said, "They didn't write it for you at all." Because there are a lot of abbreviations or Latin words in the doctor's prescriptions, a layman without professional training may not be able to read them even if they are printed out for you to read. Understand.

For example: TAT 1500u X 1

sig. 1500u imst!

The pharmacist knew what it meant at a glance, which was intramuscular tetanus injection.

On the other hand, my country's Medical Practicing Law has regulations on the place of practice of doctors, and most doctors will not change jobs frequently. Therefore, there is a long-term cooperative relationship between doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. As the doctor's handwriting became sloppy, he was actually testing the pharmacist's bottom line. He can still understand what I wrote so sloppily. I will write more sloppily next time. (Haha, just kidding). However, at least after so many years of practice, even if a few individual words are unclear, coupled with the context in the prescription, I can always understand it.

However, most outpatient prescriptions in tertiary hospitals across the country are now printed, and doctors only need to sign by hand, so this phenomenon will be significantly improved.

The above situation is my personal understanding. There is no theoretical basis.