Thou shalt write legibly

How do doctors compare?

One study looked at the legibility of doctors' handwriting compared with that of other clinicians and healthcare executives and managers. Independent volunteers gave subjective ratings of legibility as either poor, fair, good, or excellent. They found that the poorest scores were associated with executives and men, but not specifically with doctors.1 The researchers concluded, however, that just because they found doctors' handwriting to be average did not make it acceptable--they were worried that illegible handwriting can be an important clinical hazard.

Another study had conflicting results and supports the conventional wisdom that doctors' handwriting is worse than most. Researchers used computer analysis to compare doctors' handwriting with that of nurses and administrative staff. Even though they were all asked to write neatly, the doctors had significantly worse handwriting than the others.2 Interestingly, the researchers found that poor legibility was confined to letters of the alphabet rather than numbers. This could indicate how important doctors think the legibility of drug dosages is. But it is not just dosages that need to be written clearly--badly scrawled drug names can become a matter …