File this under “off-topic”, but I couldn’t help notice a post by Mark Cuban (which has some how made it on to Techmeme), involving how he basically realized that he’s lost the ability to write quickly and take notes, as he probably hasn’t done so in years (he usually does it via laptop or some kind of electronic device). But more specifically the following:
I literally couldn’t take notes fast enough because as I wrote, I realized I couldn’t read my own writing. Not only could I not read my own writing, when I tried to slow down so that everything would be legible, I realized that actually writing each letter as part of a complete word was actually difficult
When I started clerkship, the second half of medical school (and an incredible seven years ago) where, in North America, you spend the majority of your time in hospital and not actually in class, did I actually learn the same lesson Mark did. And the reason why, I suspect, that most doctors hand writing is chicken scratch. Its not that they were always this way, or that they enjoy writing illegibly.
Rather, that at some point in their career, they’ve had to write faster and faster because of how busy you are (that was one thing about being in a hospital that I just didn’t appreciate at the time). And in writing faster, and quicker, you tend to develop shortcuts in how you write, and of course, the writing tends to get a little bit more illegible over time. What makes it worse (to lay people) is that on the only bit of communication that patients see, the prescription, we tend to use abbreviations as well — but not just English abbreviations, *Latin* ones, which make it doubly hard to understand. If you’ve ever read “PO” on a prescription, it stands for “Per Os”, which is meant to be “by mouth”.
Anyway, I thought it was ironic that this kind of phenomenon would pop up, and be documented by, one of the biggest personalities in *Technology*. I wonder if anyone else has noticed this kind of phenomenon by other people in other industries?
Something for everyone to chew on on a sunny Sunday afternoon. ;)
August 12th, 2007 at 12:45 pm | Permalink
I second this…………even in dental, all our chart notes, and I make sure all all all my scripts are printed now. Consistency is also a form of protection for me. If a pharmacy gets a hand written script from me I want a call, I write to a select number of pharmacies, they know me, they know we print our scripts, they know my quantities. They DO call me it’s nice because when I used to write scripts I made a dumbass mistake, they called, the day was saved now scripts are printed hopefully no more dumbass mistakes.
August 12th, 2007 at 12:45 pm | Permalink
I meant to say all our chart notes are typed now. Sorry just a dumbass mistake.
August 12th, 2007 at 1:54 pm | Permalink
Tony - you should make a top 50 prescription acronym definitions - totally diggable!
August 12th, 2007 at 5:33 pm | Permalink
Allen, I’ve never been dugg to the FP before, and I don’t plan to change that. ;) [I have been submitted, but I usually get buried]
Having said that, there aren’t that many prescription acronyms … probably only 10 or 15 common ones.
Cheers
t
August 12th, 2007 at 9:34 pm | Permalink
Hmm - we will need to change that Tony! Don’t worry about burying, same thing happens to me.
What I don’t get is why the whole script deal isn’t more advanced. Doc puts in the script on a pc (docs don’t use macs) and customer gives doc their pharmacy and the script is transferred.
August 12th, 2007 at 9:36 pm | Permalink
Yeah, there is a whole industry behind that, and its complicated — in spite of how seemingly intuitive and important it sounds.
Sadly.
August 13th, 2007 at 11:01 am | Permalink
This is leaning away from the chicken scratch topic…..but I am entering this on my new (2day old) macBook. We don’t use apple in the office because most healthcare software is vertical windows only stuff. I am going to experiment with parallels and see what I can do. So if you were looking for hope, there ya go.
Greg Birch DDS/Gnomedexer